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THE 



PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL 



J.^H. WYTHE, M.D., D.D., LL.D., 

Professor of Histology and Microscopy in Cooper Medical College, 
San Francisco. 




Audi alteram partem. 



NEW YORK: HUNT 6- EATON. 

CINCINNA TI: CRANSTON & STOWE. 

1880. 



?s 



W i 



Copyright, 1889, by 
PHILLIPS & HUNT. 

New York. 



PREFACE 



The writer of this work is thoroughly convinced 
that the Christian philosophy which recognizes a per- 
sonal Creator and the dualism of matter and spirit is 
the true interpreter of science, and that all real prog- 
ress in knowledge is consistent with spiritual and 
eternal verities. An earlier effort to set this forth, in 
the volume entitled The Agreement of Science and 
Revelation, was w T ell received in all evangelical de- 
nominations, and it is hoped that the present result of 
many years of biological study will also be useful. 

To his brethren in the Church and ministry the 
author commends his work as an effort to promote 
positive Christian truth, and to his honest skeptical 
friends he refers the motto upon the title page, Audi 
alteram partem. 

Oakland, Cal, 1888. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

The Problem of Life. 

The properties of living matter; spontaneous motion, nutrition and 
growth, constructive power, and reproduction — The cause of 
these properties — Examination of theories; ancient theories re- 
vived; Haeckel's monistic theory; Huxley on life caused by 
organization; Hylozoism of Tyndall, etc.; correlation of force; 
the cosmoplastic theory ; the anima mundi — No view satisfactory 
save that of a spiritual psyche — Vital phenomena show intelli- 
gence — Bodily and molecular death Page 9 



CHAPTER II. 

Mind and Brain. 

Psyche, mind, or soul, not life but the cause of life — Mind incarnate 
in the entire living tissue — Structure and functions of nerves — 
Theories of brain localization do not explain intelligence — 
Conscious sensation not in the brain — The soul in all living 
matter harmonizes with experiments — Arguments against 
cerebral dominance from training of idiots; from comparative 
anatomy ; from acephalous children ; from disease and injury 
of brain ; from aphasia ; and from mental derangements — 
Doctrine of psyche meets all the facts and indicates possible 
immortality , 89 



6 CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER III. 
The Physiology of Consciousness. 

Nature, conditions, and truth of consciousness — Consciousness of 
self — Consciousness of the bodily organism — Consciousness of 
the states of the body ; or the ccensesthesis and its influence on 
body and mind — Consciousness of external things, or sensation 
— touch, smell, taste, vision, and hearing — Sensation subjec- 
tive; error not in sense but in judgment — Consciousness of 
mental operations requires no bodily organ, but is wholly 
mental — Spiritual consciousness man's highest sphere of knowl- 
edge 152 

CHAPTER IT. 

Automatism and Freedom. 

Body an imperfect vehicle ; automatism from organization — Uncon- 
scious bodily automatism, in nutritive aud other functions, habits, 
etc. — Unconscious mental automatism — Unconscious automatism 
in pathological conditions, as epilepsy, trance, hypnotism, and 
insanity — Semi-conscious automatism ; reverie, abstraction, sug- 
gestion, sleep and dreaming, somnambulism, extraordinary 
dreams, double consciousness ; combined automatism and volition 
in disease — Automatic acts irresponsible — Volition as real as 
• automatism — Objections to volition answered — Proof of volition 
even in animals and insects — Limit of the sphere of volition — 
Influence of volition on automatism — Importance of educating 
the will ; 2 1 9 

CHAPTER V. 

Heredity. 

Heredity implies typical forms — Individual potential in the germ — 
Course and varieties of germinal development — The facts of 






CONTENTS. 7 

heredity; of external form ; of internal structure; of variations 
from type ; of diseases ; of psychical peculiarities ; of habits — 
Theories of heredity: early evolutionists; Darwin's pangenesis : 
materialistic epigenesis — Psychical inheritance explains all facts 
of influence on body, intellect, and morals — Materialistic and 
psychic theories contrasted — Methods of heredity — initial, direct, 
alternate, collateral — Exceptions to these; individuality — 
Checks to heredity; to national and personal traits; to diseases; 
to intellectual tendencies ; use of education ; check to inherited 
moral evil 264 



CHAPTER VI. 

The Biblical Psychology. 

Biblical dualism of spirit and matter necessary to a true physiology — 
No seat of soul found in the Bible or in anatomy — " Soul" used in 
the Bible for person, and interchangeably with breath, blood, 
heart, etc. — Sense organs illustrative of spiritual experience — 
Superiority of biblical psychology to metaphysics — History of 
trichotomy, or man's threefold nature, in the Church — Biblical 
proofs of trichotom}'- — Relations of trichotomy to science and 
theology; illustrating a true definition of conscience : the nature 
and extent of the fall ; the reality of the new birth and the 
spiritual glory of the resurrection 308 

In t dex 327 



PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL, 



CHAPTER I. 

The Problem of Life. 



OUTLINE OF ARGUMENT. 

Biological researches respecting living matter show that it 
has powers or functions entirely different from non-living 
matter. The similarity of these powers in all living indi- 
cates similarity of nature and is a bond of unity. The 
cause of these powers is inexplicable by any materialistic 
theory. The existence of a spiritual psyche in each 
organism manifesting itself by vital functions is sufficient 
explanation. The removal of the psyche, or bodily death, 
is speedily followed by molecular death. 



1. Definition of life. The word, "life" denotes 
a class of powers or activities which are peculiar to 
certain organized bodies known as living bodies. Or- 
ganisms which are incapable of exhibiting these pe- 
culiar powers are dead bodies. Unorganized matter 
and dead organisms, although capable of manifesting 



10 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

general properties of matter, as inertia, cohesion, and 
gravity, or special properties resulting from the action 
of mechanical and physical forces, as crystallization, 
heat, electricity, or chemical affinity, are said to be 
non-living. "Webster defines "life" as "that state of 
an animal or plant in which its organs are capable of 
performing their functions; 1 ' and this is the commonly 
accepted meaning. 

2. Inquiry reasonable. A golden-haired child while 
playing in the garden is struck with lightning and dies 
in a moment, or a beloved friend, after a long and 
painful illness, closes his eyes in death. In each case 
all the activities which characterize life have ceased 
and decomposition soon reduces the dead structure to 
the condition of inorganic matter. It is a reasonable 
desire which prompts us to ask, "What makes the dif- 
ference between the living and the dead ? " 

3. Comprehensive view attainable. Since life of 
some sort belongs to both animals and vegetables, not- 
withstanding the differences in each kind, it is necessary 
to seek an explanation which may apply to all. To do 
this satisfactorily we must be familar with those activ- 
ities or functions in which they agree as well as those 
in which they differ. Thanks to the continuous im- 
provement of microscopes and to the labors of many 



THE PROBLEM OF LIFE. 11 

earnest inquirers, the elementary facts of biology — the 
science of life — are quite accessible, and, although much 
may be obscure, enough is known to enable us to form 
a definite opinion respecting the cause of life. It is a 
childish and cowardly spirit which refuses to examine 
a subject because it has been called mysterious. 

4. No means of study useless. In ancient times 
men studied truth by the aid of metaphysics, since it 
w r as the only method known. Even in modern times 
some prefer this method, but most inquirers pursue the 
path of physical research. The reaction of thought 
toward physical methods is often associated with a 
feeling of contempt for others which is as unwise as it 
is unjust. The truth may be approached from both 
sides, and not unfrequently one side will prove to be 
the complement of the other, so that both the physical 
and metaphysical modes of study are needed for true 
or complete knowledge. 

5. Applications of word life. The term "life" has 
been used in a vague or poetic manner to represent 
certain qualities of inorganic matter. Thus Yirgil 
speaks of " seats of living stone " and " the living cur- 
rent " of a fountain. Oersted also speaks of the life of 
a fountain arousing in us a feeling of enjoyment. This 
may be termed the sesthetical use of the word. Ad- 



12 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

herents of a pantheistic theology speak of the life of 
the world as expressive of a universal soul in things. 
A consistent theist also may regard ordinary physical 
phenomena as voluntary expressions of the divine life 
and intelligence immanent in all things, although 
transcending all as infinity transcends the finite. It 
is a sublime truth that " unto God belongeth power." 
He is the original source of life and force and matter. 
In him " we live and move and have our being," But 
these applications of the word " life " are wholly in- 
appropriate to express the diiference between a living 
and a dead organism. For scientific accuracy and dis- 
crimination we must restrict the term to the peculiar 
phenomena of organized beings. 

6. Outline of our plan. In our investigation of 
the problem of life we shall make use of the well- 
established facts and discoveries of biology, and shall 
discriminate carefully between the facts and the. 
theories of observers. We shall endeavor to show — 

(1.) What living things can do which dead or un- 
organized things cannot do. 

(2.) The cause of the difference. 

7. Living matter characteristic. The most unex- 
ceptional characteristic of living beings is the presence 
of vital or living matter. This is usually found in 



THE PROBLEM OF LIFE, 13 

scattered masses or continuous threads throughout the 
body. It is rare that organized structures are found 
to be all alive. The dry branches of forest-trees re- 
tain the form and minute anatomy which life pro- 
duced although they may have been dead for years. 
The oil or resin or crystals of salts in some of the 
cells of certain plants were never alive. Although 
the product of life they do not differ from similar 
inorganic substances. Even the simplest forms of 
living things — which appear to be merely jelly- 
specks — may be permeated by inorganic fluid nutri- 
ment or by dissolved products of decay. 

The living matter itself was first called sarcode and 
afterward protoplasm, or first formation. As this lat- 
ter term became used to represent elementary sub- 
stance, whether living or dead, Dr. L. Beale proposed 
the term bioplasm, or living formation. This is now 
.generally used to express living matter. 

8. Structure of the cell. In the early days of biol- 
ogy it was found that the first stage in the life-history 
of any animal or vegetable was bioplasm inclosed in a 
sort of membrane like a bladder, and it was called a 
cell. As this cell, by self -division, produced other 
cells in the construction of the organism, it was thought 
that every living body was a colony of cells. It is 



14: PHYSIOLOGY OF TEE SOUL. 

now known that cells have not always an outside 
membrane or wall, but are merely particles of jelly 
and microscopic researches indicate that the living 
matter in each perfect cell is arranged in a network 
of fibers and communicates with neighboring cells or 
particles so as to make a continuous living structure 
throughout the body either of plant or animal. 

9. Living matter in all tissues. Living matter or 
bioplasm may be found by the microscope in all tis- 
sues, although its transparency sometimes requires 
staining by carmine, etc., to isolate it from the formed 
material. Some consider the formed tissue, which is 
the ultimate product of bioplasm, as practically dead 
matter, although it may be endowed with peculiar 
properties for the use of the organism, as the contrac- 
tility of muscle and conductive power of nerve. All 
structures become effete or dead when the life-power 
is transferred to other particles or when they are re- 
moved from the vitalizing agency. 

10. Varied work of living particles. During life 
myriads of elementary particles or molecules, like busy 
bees, are engaged in various work. Some convey nu- 
triment, some build up the tissues and organs, others 
remove parts of the structure which are useless, while 
others remove the debris. This wonderful activity de- 



THE PROBLEM OF LIFE. 15 

pends partly upon the original germ-cell and its prog- 
eny finding suitable physical conditions of develop- 
ment. Otherwise life remains latent in the cell or the 
latter dies. " How long the vital power may slumber 
in the seed," says Schleiden, " is shown by the fact 
that the late Count Yon Sternberg raised healthy plants 
of wheat from grains which were found in a mummy 
case (which must have reposed for 3,000 years) and 
laid them before the Assembly of Naturalists at Frey- 
burg. 

11. Constitution of living matter. All living matter, 
or bioplasm, presents the appearance and physical 
properties of transparent jelly, and when subjected to 
chemical analysis yields the elements carbon, hydro- 
gen, oxygen, and nitrogen. A few other elements, 
as sulphur and phosphorus, are occasionally found, 
but are considered unessential. Just how these ele- 
ments are united during life, or whether ordinary 
chemical union is possible in bioplasm, can never be 
known, since the matter is deprived of life in the 
process of analysis. In active life the elements are 
so motile, or in such unstable equilibrium, as to be 
only temporarily united. The actual amount of mat- 
ter in bioplasm also must be very small. Blumenbach 
dried a human body weighing 120 pounds until it 



16 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

weighed but 7|- pounds, and Lamartine tells us that 
when the Parisian mob destroyed the tombs of the 
Bourbons "Pepin, the father of Charlemagne, was 
now but a pinch of gray ash, which was in a moment 
scattered by the wind." The rest was vapor or gas. 

12. Effects of physical forces various. Living 
and dead matter have many similar properties. 
Although so different in power they may have the 
same external form and chemical composition. Physi- 
cal and chemical forces act upon both, but not always 
in the same manner. Gravitation acts upon the living 
and the dead, yet a living tree grows upward against 
the power of gravity. The semi-fluid state of bio- 
plasm seems to depend upon water, which freezes 
at 32 degrees F. and boils at 212 degrees, but bio- 
plasm will neither freeze nor boil ; it resists all ex- 
tremes of heat and cold while life remains. Different 
living organisms differ in adaptability to heat. The 
motions of some primitive forms are arrested by 
ice-water and recommence on an increase of temper- 
ature, yet the development of trouts' eggs proceeds 
well in ice- water, while in a warm room they soon die. 
Some simple plants grow well in snow and others in 
thermal springs of a high temperature. 

If heat changes be gradual living matter often 



THE PROBLEM OF LIFE. 17 

adapts itself to them. Thus men endure an Arctic 
winter while workers in plaster bear for a consider- 
able time the heat of an oven raised to 500 degrees 
F., and Dr. Dallinger has shown that certain infusoria 
adapt themselves to great changes of heat when grad- 
ually applied. The influence of light and electricity 
also varies greatly according to the species or kinds of 
bioplasm. The modification of chemical agency by 
bioplasm is seen not only in a difference of molecular 
coalescence, by which similar substances assume differ- 
ent forms, as the various shapes of bones and shells, 
but also in a vast variety of products which are nat- 
urally found only in connection with vital actions. 
Chemists have imitated a few of these products, but 
the majority are as yet only found as the result of life. 
Such are albumen, starch, gum, etc. 

13. Similar origin of all living. All animals and 
vegetables originate in a semi-fluid particle of bio- 
plasm, and from similar jelly-like particles all organic 
tissues, as bone, muscle, nerve, and skin in animals, and 
fiber, wood, and vessels in vegetables, are constructed. 
Living matter is thus a bond of unity among all living 
beings, and all their diversities are caused by the di- 
versity of their origin or by external forces of environ- 
ment. In appearance and essential properties living 
2 



18 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

matter is the same in the fungus and the oak, the but- 
terfly and the dog, the worm and the man ; yet the 
difference in power is as remarkable as the resem- 
blance. 

14. Progress of natural history. Our knowledge 
of living matter has been of gradual growth. The 
mathematical and metaphysical studies of the ancients 
led to a neglect of natural history, although Aristotle, 
Theophrastus, and Pliny wrote descriptions in which 
truth and error are strangely blended. In the seven- 
teenth century of our era Ray made an elaborate 
effort to classify animals and plants, which was an 
improvement upon previous efforts, and about 
the same time simple microscopes came into use in 
Holland. The wonders revealed by these lenses stim- 
ulated observers, and Leewenheck, Malpighi, and 
Grew became eminent for their observations and care- 
ful descriptions of natural objects. The writings of 
Linnssus (1707-1778) classified living beings by exter- 
nal characters, and established the method of giving 
both generic and specific names. Cuvier (1769-1832) 
preferred to distinguish animals according to their in- 
ternal anatomy, and pointed out the existence of four 
types, or ideal plans, of structure — the vertebrata, 
articulata, mollusca, and radiata. Agassiz (1832-1873) 



THE PROBLEM OF LIFE. 19 

showed this arrangement of Cuvier's to be a correct 
exposition of nature by embryological, zoological, and 
geological evidence. Some naturalists distinguished 
other types. 

15. Development Theories. Modern students of 
nature are not content with classifications nor with 
establishing types of structure ; they seek a central 
principle of organization which may explain all kinds 
of structure and function. In astronomy the theory 
of Copernicus was confirmed by Newton's demonstra- 
tion of gravitation, and in chemistry Dalton's atomic 
theory was established by the law of Avogadro and 
Ampere, as it is called — that "equal volumes of all 
substances in the state of gas and under like conditions 
contain the same number of molecules." This law is 
confirmed by all chemical actions. It does not seem 
extravagant, therefore, to expect that some central 
principle may be found in natural science which will 
be a key to unlock the mysteries of organized life. 
The first elaborate effort of this kind was by Lam- 
arck (1744-1829), who regarded all classifications 
as artificial and taught the gradual transformation of 
all animal forms from the more simple and imper- 
fect to the more complex. His theory of evolution 
regards life as beginning spontaneously from life- 



20 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

less elements and transformations from one kind 
to another as caused by natural operations acting 
through a long period of time. The modification of 
organs in different animals he attributes to changes in 
the habits of the animals occasioned by changes in the 
surrounding circumstances. This theory, slightly 
modified under the name of "natural selection," is 
now generally known as Darwinism, since the writ- 
ings of Dr. C. Darwin (1859-1875) have brought it 
into general notice. Sometimes it is called " the de- 
velopment theory," and is adopted either as a truth or 
a good working hypothesis by many modern natu- 
ralists. 

16. Objections to the development theory. The devel- 
opment theory, or natural selection by the survival of 
the fittest, as taught by Darwin, and the theory of the 
change of form of species by desire, use, and effort, 
on account of a change in the environment, as taught 
by Lamarck, lack the simplicity and applicability of 
the laws of gravitation and of chemical molecules. 
The geological evidence of the sudden beginning of 
many forms of life while other forms continue un- 
changed amid wondrous changes of environment, the 
absence of transitional forms even on the same mount- 
ain-side, and the occurrence of many instances of com- 



THE PROBLEM OF LIFE. 21 

plicate structure in plants and animals with nothing 
similar preceding them from which they could have 
originated, according to the theory either of appetency 
or natural selection, with other grave objections, 
hinder the acceptance of these theories by many sin- 
cere inquirers. May not a more complete and cen- 
tralizing principle of organization be seen in the essen- 
tial properties of bioplasm or living matter ? 

17. History of minute anatomy. The older anato- 
mists thought they had reached the simplest elements 
of organisms when they had distinguished tissues, as 
bone, cartilage, muscle, fat, nerves, vessels, etc. Later 
observers considered these, as well as all vegetable 
tissues, as made up of granules, globules, fibers, and 
membranes. Later still the true unit of all the tissues 
has been found in bioplasm. Haller, sometimes called 
the father of modern physiology (1766), showed the 
necessity of comparative anatomy, of the examination 
of living animals, and of investigating diseases before 
and after death, in order to a true knowledge of the 
laws of life. His generalizations often anticipated 
modern discoveries. Thus he resolved all animal tis- 
sues into fibers and concrete glue or jelly. 

Bichat (1801) published his great work on general 
anatomy, in which the complex organs were reduced 



22 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

to simple or elementary tissues, and the importance of 
distinguishing between the organic and the animal 
functions was clearly shown. 

Dujardin (1835) discovered a contractile jelly in the 
bodies of lower animals, which he called sarcode. 

Muller (1835) showed the analogy between the dor- 
sal cord in embryonic animals and vegetable cells. 

Schleiden and Schwann (1838) proved the origin of 
all tissues, both animal and vegetable, to be in cells. 
This was afterward elaborated by Yirchow (1858), 
who established the truth of the doctrine, " Omnis 
cellida e cellula " — all cells are from cells. 

Beale (1859) discovered the independent staining of 
bioplasm by the carminate of ammonia, and taught 
that every tissue during life contains matter in three 
states or conditions — living matter, or bioplasm, formed 
material, and pabulum. 

To refer to all the discoveries respecting bioplasm 
would require a volume. We shall be content with a 
general statement of its peculiar properties. It may, 
however, be well to state briefly the results of the 
researches of Heitzman and his collaborateurs (1868- 
188-7), which are sometimes referred to as "the 
bioplasson doctrine in histology." They claim that by 
means of the superior optical power of modern micro- 



THE PROBLEM OF LIFE. 23 

scopes they have observed the living matter in the 
elementary or embryonic cell to assume the form of a 
net- work, which becomes united with a similar net- work 
in every cell developed from the first, rendering the 
entire organism a net-work of living matter. At the 
junction of the libers in the net- work the tissue is 
enlarged, producing in inferior instruments the ap- 
pearance of granulations. Motions in bioplasm result 
from changes in these swellings, or nodules, producing 
elongation or contraction of the communicating fibers. 
These statements of Heitzman are confirmed by the 
intracellular and intranuclear net-works described by 
independent observers of undoubted skill, as Flem- 
ming, Klein, etc. The movements of bioplasm in 
vegetable cells, the phenomena of fibrillar division in 
nuclei during cell-development, and the most recent 
accounts of histological structure, accord with this 
teaching. 

18. Essential properties of living matter. After 
this general description of living matter, and histor- 
ical sketch of discovery, we consider those properties 
of bioplasm which are essential to it every- where, in 
man, animal, or plant, whether occurring in fibrils or 
distinct particles. These properties are acknowledged 
by all biologists, even those who do not accept the 



24 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

" bioplasson doctrine " of a communicating net- 
work. 

19. Spontaneous motion. An essential property of 
living matter is spontaneous motion. In this respect 
it differs from all sorts of dead or non-living matter. 
Ordinary or inorganic matter may be acted upon, but 
living matter is self-acting. Living matter has in- 
herent energy and can overcome inertia, but the non- 
living are unable to originate motion. The motions 
of the living are utterly unlike those of all kinds of 
non-living matter. The movements of the heavenly 
bodies, transference of motion by impact of moving 
bodies, and movements produced by heat and other 
physical forces, are events of daily observation. In 
addition some physicists teach invisible motions of the 
molecules of bodies, and under the microscope we 
may see a peculiar trembling or vibration in any small 
particles of either living or non-living matter sus- 
pended in a fluid, but the peculiar movements of liv- 
ing matter are totally unlike all others. 

20. Change of form. A microscopic mass of living 
matter may change its form. Such a mass forms the 
entire organism of some of the simpler kinds of animal 
or vegetable life. The amoeba or proteus is such a 
mass, and as its changes of shape resemble those of 



THE PROBLEM OF LIFE. 25 

separate cells or masses of bioplasm, such motions are 
called amoeboid. The shape of the living particle is 
constantly changing by the protrusion or retraction of 
threads, swellings, tufts, or broad flattened projections, 
so as to produce the greatest diversity of form. These 
changes of form occur under the eye of the observer, 
so that in a few moments quite a variety of shapes 
may have been assumed. 

21. Wandering movements. Living corpuscles can 
not only change their form, but their place. They 
can wander about. This is done by the protrusion of 
one portion of the mass which forms an arm or tem- 
porary bridge along which the molecules of the jelly- 
like bioplasm flow and accumulate at the farthest end. 

22. Inherent molecular motions. There is also in 
any particle or thread of bioplasm an inherent move- 
ment of the molecules among themselves. If such a 
particle is changing its form a relatively slow current 
will be seen in the mass under the microscope by 
means of accidental or developed granules embedded in 
the bioplasm, which are carried along by the current. 
There is also a swift-flowing movement in bioplasm 
far more rapid than the change of form. " As the 
passengers in a broad street swarm together so do the 
granules in one of the broader threads make their way 



26 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

by one another, oftentimes stopping and hesitating, 
jet always pursuing a determinate direction corre- 
sponding to the long axis of the thread. They fre- 
quently become stationary in the middle of the course 
and then turn round ; but the greater number pass to 
the extreme end of the thread and then reverse the 
direction of their movement. It cannot be doubted 
that these continuous motions depend on vital proc- 
esses in the cells. At all events, we are acquainted 
with no analogous phenomena in unorganized 
bodies." * 

23. Power of selection. Another property of living 
matter, which distinguishes it from all non-living 
matter, is the power of selection, on which its nutri- 
tion and growth, together with what is known in 
physiology as secretion and excretion, depend. 

24. Growth. The non-living always enlarges by 
accretion from similar material ; the living matter 
takes hold of material which is chemically unlike itself, 
breaks up the affinities existing between the chemical 
elements of such matter, selects and appropriates sucli 
molecules or atoms as it needs, and discards such as 
are unfit for its use. By virtue of this power of selec- 
tion and appropriation plants and animals are con- 

* Strieker's Histology. 



THE PROBLEM OF LIFE. 27 

stantly adding to their textures new matter, by which 
they are nourished. Plants usually appropriate their 
nutriment from the inorganic kingdom, or from de- 
caying organic matter, although Darwin has shown 
that some plants are insectivorous. Animals chiefly 
derive their nourishment from organic matter, either 
animal or vegetable. 

25. Modes of nutrition. In the simpler organisms, 
which are composed merely of a single particle or 
mass of bioplasm floating in a fluid which contains its 
food or pabulum, the living matter moves toward the 
substance proper for its nourishment, takes it into its 
own substance by surrounding it with its jelly-like 
material, and, by the powder of its vital chemistry, 
transforms it into its own substance. In organisms a 
little higher in the scale of being intercommunicating 
spaces or channels are formed, the living matter assum- 
ing the form of a net-work of fibers w T ith thicker masses 
where they intersect. Thus the fluid adapted to nu- 
trition meanders in all directions- through the meshes 
and is appropriated by the bioplasm. In the higher 
animals and in man a series of vessels and complex 
organs is developed for conveying nutriment through- 
out the body and for removing products resulting 
from decay. The food is taken into the alimentary 



28 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

canal arid submitted to the action of various secretions. 
It is then taken up by masses of bioplasm and con- 
verted into blood, whence the bioplasm of the various 
tissues obtains its supply. In a similar way it is prob- 
able that bioplasmic particles take up the matters re- 
sulting from the decay of the tissues and return them 
to the blood which is supplied to the excretory organs. 
The chemistry of living matter is a most difficult, if 
not impossible, study, since we have in every organism 
a mixture of materials, inorganic, formative, living, 
and retrogressive. The chemical composition of the 
various tissues, however, differs from that of the 
blood or nutriment, and must be ascribed to the trans- 
formations produced by the action of living matter, 
since such transformations are never found in the non- 
living. 

26. Endosmose inapplicable. Endosmose, or the 
physical property by which fluids pass through mem- 
branes, or gummy matters, may account for the. flow of 
fluid nutriment, to a certain extent ; but it will not 
account for the chemical changes in nutrition. 

27. Growth not crystallization. The nutrition and 
growth of living particles have been compared with 
crystallization, but they have nothing in common be- 
yond the fact that both the crystal and the bioplast 



THE PROBLEM OF LIFE. 29 

may increase in size. In crystallization there is de- 
posit of material from a solution of similar chemical 
composition, while growth occurs from dissimilar mat- 
ter. In nutrition there is a change of composition, 
transformation, and selection also. 

28. Nutrition not catalysis. Some have likened 
nutrition to a chemical phenomenon called catalysis, 
in winch chemical change takes place on account of 
the presence or physical quality of a substance which 
remains unaffected, as when spongy platinum induces 
the union of oxygen and hydrogen gases. In cataly- 
sis, however, the third substance neither gives nor 
takes from the excited or combining elements ; but in 
nutrition living matter selects appropriate chemical 
elements from its pabulum, dissolving their former 
affinities and recombining them in a manner which 
the non-living cannot do. In nutrition there is no 
third substance present which is known to us, and all 
the phenomena are peculiar to living matter. 

29. Constructive power. A third property of liv- 
ing matter, which distinguishes it from all other matter, 
may be termed its constructive power, or an inherited 
tendency to produce a specific form or type and struc- 
tures adapted to specific functions. According to 
Professor Huxley, " this particle of jelly is capable of 



30 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

guiding physical forces in such a manner as to give 
rise to exquisite and almost mathematically-arranged 
structures."* Whatever we may deem the cause of 
this wonderful power there can be no controversy as 
to the fact. 

30. Progressive differentiation. The constructive 
power which aims at special form is witnessed in the 
development of every plant and animal in the world. 
" All the germs of animals, without exception, at the 
first moment when the eye of the observer can seize 
them, present an appearance absolutely similar. At 
this first stage the germ does not permit the future 
being which it contains in any manner to appear. 
More than this — the first transformations of the germ 
appear alike identical in all animals without exception, 
until the moment when the exterior layers of the germ 
commence to take the form of an organized tissue or 
blastoderm. The germ then becomes an embryo, and 
begins to be divided between the different essential 
forms of the animal kingdom, the form of the verte- 
brates and the form of the invertebrates. This de- 
velopment continues, always proceeding from the 
general to the particular, from the indeterminate to 
the determinate, from the chief division to the class, 

■^Introduction to Classification— quoted by Beale. 



THE PROBLEM OF LIFE. 31 

from the class to the tribe, from the tribe to the genus, 
from the genus to the species. In a word, its develop- 
ment is a progressive differentiation. But it is not 
indifferently that sucli a germ takes such a form ; it is 
not free, quite indeterminate though it be, either to 
be vertebrate or invertebrate; if vertebrate to be 
mammifer, bird, reptile, or fish ; if mammif er, to be- 
long to this or that species. ]N T o ; it can only take the 
determinate form of the being from which it pro- 
ceeds." * 

31. Adaptation of structure to function. The 
adaptation of structure to function by the constructive 
power of living matter is just as evident as the de- 
terminate development of the germ. " The external 
physical world and the internal laboratory of the living 
being are separated from each other by impenetrable 
veils, and yet they are united to each other by an in- 
credible pre-established harmony. On the outside 
there is a physical agent called light ; within there is 
fabricated an optical machine adapted to the light ; 
outside there is an agent called sound ; inside, an 
acoustic machine adapted to sound ; outside, vegetables 
and animals; inside, stills and alembics adapted to 
the assimilation of the substances : outside, a medium, 

* Janet's Final Causes. 



32 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

solid, liquid, or gaseous ; inside, a thousand means of 
locomotion, adapted to the air, the earth, or the water. 
Thus, on the one hand, these are the final phenomena 
called sight, hearing, nutrition, flying, walking, swim- 
ming, ere ; on the other, the eyes, the ears, the stomach, 
the wings, the fins, the motive members of every 
sort." * 

32. Repair of injuries. The constructive or forma- 
tive power of living matter is also seen in the repair 
of injuries. " When succulent organs of the higher 
plants, no longer in the bud-condition, are injured, the 
wound generally becomes closed up by cork-tissue — 
that is, new cells arise near the wounded surface by 
repeated division of those which are yet sound, and 
these, forming a firm skin, separate the inner living 
tissue from the outermost injured layer of cells. The 
walls of this tissue resist the most various agents."f 
The same reparative principle is seen in the living 
animal. By it wounds and fractures are healed, and 
ulcerated or mutilated parts often restored. But for 
this power medical and surgical art would be useless. 
There is nothing analogous to this power in the in- 
organic world. 

33. Reproduction. The fourth essential property 

* Janet's Final Causes. tSach's Text- book of Botany. 



THE PROBLEM OF LIFE. 33 

of living matter is that of reproduction, whereby each 
organism is capable of perpetuating its own kind or 
species. We discriminate between this and its con- 
structive power, since the last refers to the organism 
itself, while reproduction is the multiplication of 
organisms of a similar kind. 

" What would be said of a watch-maker," writes 
Fenelon, " who could make watches spontaneously 
producing others without end, so that the two first 
watches should be sufficient to multiply and perpetu- 
ate the species on the earth % " "Aristotle had already 
noticed this difference between nature and art — nature 
acting from within and art from without. Kant has 
made the distinction deeper. 

" ' In a watch,' he says, ' one part is an instrument 
that serves to move others ; but no wheel is the effi- 
cient cause of the production of the others. One part 
exists for the sake of another, and not by the latter. 
Therefore, also, the productive cause of these parts 
and of their forms does not reside in the nature (of the 
watch), but apart from it, in a being capable of acting 
according to the idea of a whole, possible by its caus- 
ality . . . An organized being is not, then, a mere 
machine, having only the motive force ; it possesses in 

it a formative virtue, and communicates it to materials 
3 



;;i rm sioi OQ \ OF /'///•.' son . 

that have ii not, by organiiing them ; find this forma 
tive virtue which propagates itself cannot be explained 
by the motive foroe alone (by mechanism).' " v 

"Living organisms have been frequently regai'dod 
as a box 1 ! of mechanism, and compared with docks and 
watches and other pieces of apparatus whioh can be 
wound up or otherwise besetgoing, Ii must, how 
ever, be obvious enough to any one who uses his reason 
aright iliai a tiling which grows and seems to make 
itself, we know not how, is essentially different from a 
tiling which has been made, built, constructed, and 
(he several parts of which ii consists have been put 
together by man in a way we can understand and im- 
itate, 'The analogy stated to exist is not only most 
fanciful but cannot be instituted with fairness and 
propriety." M [f any apparatus we could contrive d< 4 
veloped all possible modes of force motion, heat, 
Light, electricity, magnetism, chemical action, and any 
number of others vol to be discovered that apparatus 
would still present no approach whatever to any organ 
ism known. Of course such a tiling might be colled 
an organism, just as a watch, or a steam engine, or 
water, or any thing else, may be called a creature — a 
worm or any other living thing called a machine. 
*Jimot'a / mal Camus, 



THE PROBLEM OF LIFE. 35 

But every living machine seems to grow of itself, 
builds itself up and multiplies, while every non-living 
machine that has yet been discovered is made. It 
neither grows nor can it produce machines like itself."* 
The generation of living beings is sometimes exceed- 
ingly simple in method. In the unicellular plants and 
animals the usual method is that of self-division. In 
the higher forms of life sexual union is necessary to 
reproduction. Yet in the simple as well as in the 
more complex forms the power of generation is utterly 
unlike any power exhibited by inorganic substances. 
" When a chicken," says Claud Bernard, " is developed 
in an egg, it is not so much the formation of the animal 
body as the grouping of chemical elements which es- 
sentially characterizes the vital function. This group- 
ing takes place only in accordance with the laws which 
determine the physio-chemical properties of matter. 
But that which is essentially of the domain of life, and 
which does not belong either to chemistry or physics, 
is the determining idea of this evolution. In every 
living germ there is a determining idea which devel- 
ops itself and becomes manifest in the organization. 
The specific and final idea precedes and molds the living 
organism. If from the organism we pass to its various 

*Beale's Protoplasm. 



36 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

functions, it may be said that the functional idea pre- 
cedes the organ and that the function forms the organ. 
All the functions which are to co-operate in the life of 
the being are, so to speak, presaged and indicated before 
the function actually comes into play. The future 
circulation is indicated before the organs by which it 
is to be carried on and developed, by the appearance of 
blood-corpuscles. In the same way the nervous system 
is first to be traced in scattered rudiments. Why the 
lungs in the foetus, when it cannot breathe ? Why the 
eyes, the ears, when there is no sight or hearing ? The 
answer is that all is being prepared and organized for 
these functions, which are to come into play at a given 
moment. The predetermined idea creates, little by 
little, the instrument which will enable it to perform 
its work."* 

"We do not, indeed, deny that the function requires 
outwardly favorable conditions to bring it into play. 
If these conditions are disturbed or defective the func- 
tion itself is disturbed, and we witness monstrous 
deviations from the normal plan. But these in no 
way disprove the determining idea ; they only show 
that the organ has not been able to overcome the influ- 
ence of abnormal conditions." f 

* De. Pressense's Study of Origins. t Ibid. 



THE PROBLEM OF LIFE. 37 

34. Living matter a central principle of study. 
In tins account of the essential properties of living 
matter — spontaneous movement, selection, formative 
power and reproduction — we have confined ourselves 
to well-established facts respecting those powers which 
are common to all sorts of living matter, both in the 
vegetable and animal kingdoms, as they are called, since 
in the present state of science it is impossible to say 
where the line should be drawn between the plant and 
the animal. The exhibition of such powers in all 
kinds of living matter forms a true central principle 
from which the organized world may be conveniently 
studied and the variations in the forms and functions 
of living beings, w T hich are obvious to all, traced either 
to fundamental differences or to the mutual actions of 
the living matter and its environment. 

35. What causes life f The essential properties of 
living matter, which are so different from those of the 
non-living, must have a real cause. This is our next 
subject of inquiry. Hitherto we have dwelt in the 
region of fact and have related only what natural sci- 
ence has revealed. We now consider the theories 
which have been proposed in answer to the question, 
What causes life ? 

From the dawn of literary history this question has 



38 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

been the battle-field of thought. Its relations to 
philosophy and theology have invested it with pro- 
found interest, and the acutest intellects of the world 
have tried their strength in endeavors to answer it. It 
may seem, therefore, to be a bold if not useless attempt 
to solve the problem. But a child may hold a mirror 
so that the sunlight may enter a dark room, and the bio- 
logical facts collected by modern science furnish suffi- 
cient criteria by which to test the theories proposed. 

36. Ancient theories. Cudworth, in his Intellectual 
System of the Universe, shows that the atomic consti- 
tution of matter was taught in Greek philosophy long 
before Democritus and Leucippus, and was considered 
to be in no way inconsistent with the reality of incor- 
poreal substance which was deemed the principle of 
life and soul and mind. After Democritus, Epicurus 
and Lucretius were the chief supporters of atomic 
atheism, which regards material atoms as the element- 
ary principles of all things, animate and inanimate, 
while Plato and Aristotle upheld the doctrine of in- 
corporeal substance in the world of life and thought. 
Cudworth also traces from Strato the doctrine of hy- 
lozoism, which teaches that every particle of matter is 
essentially possessed with unconscious life and is capa- 
ble of self-organization into animals and men. He 



THE PROBLEM OE LIEE. 39 

attributes to certain of the Stoic philosophers the 
eosmo-plastic theory, that the universe has a general 
plastic nature or life of its own. by which all things 
are unconsciously developed, so that "the first rudi- 
ments of the world contained in them not only the 
sun and moon, the courses of the stars, and the gen- 
eration of animals, but also the vicissitudes of all ter- 
restrial things." * Cudworth himself taught a plastic 
or formative power in matter as well as an incorporeal 
cause of life and mind. 

Descartes (1596-1650) taught that the essence of 
mind was thought, and that of matter extension ; 
while Leibnitz (1646—1716) referred the essence of all 
being, whether matter or mind, to monads of force. 
Some of these speculations re-appear in every theory 
proposed as an explanation of the cause of life. 

37. Life denied oy .some theorists. Certain writers 
have attempted to cut the Gordian knot by boldly 
affirming that there is no essential difference between 
the living and the non-living. Thus Grindrod declares 
that life "is the name of the sustaining principle by 
which every thing out of the Creator subsists,"' and 
among other writers expressing the same view quotes 
Herbert Spencer, from the Westminster JReview, as 

* Cud worth's Intellectual System of the Universe. Vol. I, p. 287. 



40 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

saying that, " the characteristic which, manifested in 
a high degree, we call life, is a characteristic man- 
ifested only in a lower degree by so-called inanimate 
objects." Yet in the same essay Grindrod states that 
inorganic life " has nothing in common with organic 
or physiological life, much less with the spiritual." 
This will suffice as an example of the looseness of 
thought which is so common in modern literature. We 
have already shown that the organic and inorganic 
kingdoms have much in common, but that what are 
ordinarily called living things have certain powers or 
properties which the inorganic do not possess. 

38. Monistic and materialistic evolution-theory of 
Haeckel. Professor Haeekel, of Jena, is the most 
prominent exponent of the evolutional theories of 
Lamarck and Darwin, and bases his monistic system 
upon the declaration that " all natural bodies which are 
known to us are equally animated, and that the distinc- 
tion which has been made between animate and inan- 
imate bodies does not exist." {History of Creation. 
Yol. I, p. 23.) He repeats and fully indorses La- 
marck's statements : " Life is purely a physical phe- 
nomenon. All the phenomena of life depend on 
mechanical, physical, and chemical causes, which are 
inherent in the nature of matter itself. The simplest 



THE PROBLEM OF LIFE. 41 

animals and the simplest plants, which stand at the 
lowest point in the scale of organization, have orig- 
inated and still originate by spontaneous generation. 
All animate natural bodies or organisms are subject to 
the same laws as inanimate natural bodies or anorgana. 
The ideas and actions of the understanding are the 
motional phenomena of the central nervous system. 
The will is, in truth, never free. Reason is only a 
higher degree of development and combination of 
judgments." 

39. IlaeckeVs offensive style. It is hard to criticise 
dispassionately an author like Haeckel, whose anti- 
theological temper leads him to an offensiveness which 
is not only gross, but shallow, as in the following quo- 
tations : " capricious Creator ; " " the Creator must 
himself be conceived of as an organism ; " " the 
Church militant never ceases to give the lie to the 
plain facts of human germ-history ; " " the very an- 
cient fable of the all- wise plan according to which ' the 
Creator's hand has ordained all things with wisdom 
and understanding,' the empty phrase about the pur- 
posive ' plan of structure ' of organisms is in this way 
completely disproved ; " "the ' moral ordering of the 
world ' is a poem which is proved to be false by the 
actual facts." 



42 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

40. Antagonism to scientists. The coarseness and 
vulgarity with which Haeckel assails his critics, not 
merely those with theological views, but scientists of 
well-known fame, is on a par with his odium anti- 
theologicum. Even those of his own evolutional school 
who dare to question his peculiar views share in his 
epithets. Thus the " Ignorahimus" of Du Bois Key- 
mond, which he applies to the limit of human knowl- 
edge respecting consciousness, is declared to be " the 
'Ignoratis^ of the infallible Vatican and of the 'black 
international ' which it leads." Carl Yogt and Sem- 
per, because they do not admit Ilaeckel's phytogeny, 
have "defective education and insufficient acquaint- 
ance with zoology," and are " contemners of all philos- 
ophy." His and Kolliker are pronounced " unlearned." 
The theology of Agassiz is to Haeckel as a red rag to 
a mad bull, and among other rabid expressions he de- 
clares that Agassiz was " gifted with too much genius 
actually to believe in the truth of the mystic nonsense 
which he preached." 

41. JVeed of examination. Despite these blem- 
ishes the importance attached to Haeckel's zoological 
work by many naturalists justifies an examination of 
the manner in which he endeavors to substantiate his 
theory that there is no real distinction between the liv- 



THE PROBLEM OF LIFE. 43 

ing and the non-living. A careful examination, how- 
ever, reveals nothing but a reiteration of opinion, 
stated with all the confidence of well-ascertained facts, 
but resting solely upon the ipse dixit of the writer. 

42. Materialistic asumpiions. In his History of 
Creation Haeckel teaches that the first organisms arose 
by spontaneous generation. He admits that there are 
chemical and physical differences between organisms 
and anorgana, but declares that these arise from the 
different manner in which the elements are united by 
chemical combination. This difference of manner is 
caused by the physical and chemical properties of car- 
bon producing albuminous protoplasm. The motions 
of organisms, nutrition, propagation, and all other vital 
phenomena, are to be reduced to the properties of the 
carbon. Growth only differs from crystallization in 
the deposition of new particles within the organism, 
while in the crystal the deposit is external. The inner 
constructive force or formative tendency correspond- 
ing to the heredity of organisms depends on the con- 
stitution of the matter itself, both in crystals and organ- 
isms, while the external constructive force or adapta- 
tion depends on the influence of surrounding matter. 
Haeckel declares that if the hypothesis of spontaneous 
generation be not accepted "we must have recourse 



44 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

to the miracle of a supernatural creation." (Vol. I, 
p. 348.) 

In his Evolution of Man Haeckel enumerates the 
vital activities as growth, nutrition, adaptation, repro- 
duction, heredity, division of labor or specialization, 
atavism, and coalescence, and says also that " the fer- 
tilized egg-cell is of a nature entirely different from 
that of the unfertilized egg-cell." The inconsistency 
of this with his theory is unnoticed. He declares the 
cells of an organism to be " independent living beings," 
and the j)hysiological function of the cells of the brain 
and spinal cord constitute "the mind-life of man," 
which was progressively evolved from the simplest cell 
function, as that was spontaneously formed from the 
non-living. 

The foregoing resume is a fair representation of the 
monistic or mechanical theory of the universe as given 
by its chief modern apostle. Its naked assertions and 
dogmatism are unsupported by proof other than the 
fancied analogy between the growth of bioplasm and 
of a crystal, and the resemblances of the earlier or em- 
bryonic stages of life history in organisms. 

43. Dr. Bealds answer to materialism. Respect- 
ing the analogy with crystallization so often referred 
to, we have already shown (Sec. 29) that it is wholly 



THE PROBLEM OF LIFE. 45 

inapplicable, since crystals are deposited from similar, 
while organisms grow from dissimilar material. 

The writings of Dr. L. S. Beale have fully an- 
swered the assertions of the adherents of the new 
mechanical philosophy, and none of that school have 
replied to his arguments. In his Mystery of Life, p. 
30, he says. " The formation of a crystal in a solution 
is no more analogous to the production of a monad in 
a solution of organic matter than the further ' growth' 
of the crystal is analogous to the further ' growth' of 
the monad, or than the formation of a second crystal 
upon the first is analogous to the development of a 
second monad from that already existing. The crystal- 
line matter can be redissolved, and will crystallize 
again as many times as we like, but the monad matter 
cannot be redissolved and reformifled any more than 
a dog or a man can be dissolved and then produced 
again from the solution. Neither man, nor any living 
thing, nor any kind of living matter can be dissolved, 
for that which lives is incapable of solution." 

Again he writes (Protoplasm, p. 54), "Although 
plants and animals have been oftentimes compared 
with machines no one has yet taught exactly in what 
particulars any plant or animal is like any machine. 
For my part I cannot discover the slightest resem- 



46 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

blance in origin, form, composition, or mode of action. 
I have looked over and over again at the matter of the 
living plant and animal in which or by which the 
wonderful changes characteristic of it are effected in 
health and disease, but I have seen nothing save a 
little transparent, structureless, colorless, semi-fluid 
stuff. I even see this move. While under my ob- 
servation various substances of complex chemical 
composition may be formed through its agency, but 
the highest magnifying powers do not enable me to 
form any conception concerning how this is done. 
The living matter may increase in size, and I may see 
it divide and subdivide so as to give rise to other 
masses like itself. But how it moves, how it grows, 
how it forms, and how or why it divides, I cannot tell. 
I know, however, it does not move like any mechan- 
ism of which we have any experience, for it moves in 
any and every direction, and every minute portion ex- 
hibits movements of its own accord, not from being 
pushed or pulled by others. There is no machine 
that moves of its own accord in any part. The parts 
of a machine are mov(d. The living matter does not 
grow like a crystal, for the stuff of which it is made 
cannot be detected in the solution around it ; nor is 
the matter deposited particle after particle upon the 



THE PROBLEM OF LIFE. 47 

surface. Neither does it produce chemical compounds 
like the chemist, for, as has been shown, there is 
nothing like a laboratory, chemicals, apparatus, or 
chemist there." 

" Kant speaks of the gradual descent ' from man 
clown to the zoophyte, from this even to the mosses 
and lichen, and thus at last to the lowest degree of 
nature by us perceptible — mere matter, whence, as 
well as from her forces, ruled by mechanical laws 
similar to those by which she acts in the formation of 
crystals, the whole mechanism of nature seems to be 
derived ; ' and many still seem to think with Kant ; but 
such notions do not receive and never have received the 
support of facts. They are not in accord with the 
general results of observation and experiment, but 
have always depended upon authority. They have 
many very clever and active advocates, who do not 
consider inconsistency fatal to the reputation of every 
philosophic system. In one form or another these 
views have always been taught, and I believe will 
continue to be enforced. But they are not true, and 
their supporters never have at any time answered, nor 
can they now dispose of the arguments that have been 
advanced against these doctrines. When pressed 
they call in the aid of prophecy, and protest strongly 



48 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

that thej have faith in the infallible truths and in the 
incontrovertible evidence that will be developed by the 
really true science of the about to be. They are most 
anxious that the coming race should be brought up in 
the true faith that a miracle never happened, and 
always has been, and ever will be impossible. They 
fear, and have excellent grounds for their fear, that if 
vital power was admitted the first bestowal of that 
vital power upon non-living matter would be regarded 
as a miracle, and that the admission of this one miracle 
might lead to the supposition that others had been 
wrought, and thus pave the way to a belief in a power 
capable, perhaps, of performing not only that, but 
miracles of another kind equally impossible to science, 
and inadmissible according to law." (p. 308.) 

44. Beetle on likeness of embryos. Respecting em- 
byological resemblances Dr. Beale says : " All bio- 
plasm is not the same, but the fact of general agree- 
ment in structure between many different forms of 
living beings has been considered one of the strong- 
est arguments in favor of the doctrine of a common 
origin. And as soon as the fact of a close similarity 
of all kinds of bioplasm is generally admitted we shall 
be told that the evidence of the identity of origin is 
quite complete." " Arguments which are considered 



THE PROBLEM OF LIFE. 49 

highly interesting, and of the utmost importance, hav- 
ing been repeated over and over again, and forced 
upon the public as irrefragible, have been drawn from 
the close resemblance asserted to exist at a particular 
period of development between the human embryo 
and that of the dog. [I do not, however, admit as a 
fact that the resemblance at the time selected is very 
great. By careful examination of well-prepared speci- 
mens any accurate observer would be able to point 
out many strong points of difference, even at this 
early stage of development.] Is it not, however, very 
curious that the fact of the still closer likeness between 
the embryos at an earlier period of their development 
is not mentioned, and that the fact that at a still 
earlier stage they could not have been distinguished by 
any means at our disposal, should have been entirely 
passed over? " 

" It is possible that too much may be proved for 
the best interests of evolution by the fact alluded to ; 
or is there a fear that the outlines of the evolutional 
idea might be rendered a little less sharp and clear 
and definite if we found ourselves forced to admit 
that the matter of every living form at an early period 
of development was alike, and that there were no 

characters by which we could determine whether a 
4 



50 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

given specimen was about to become horse, dog, man, 
or ape 1 One form of living matter is indistinguish- 
able from another. Neither the most careful micro- 
scopical observation nor the most skillful chemical 
analysis would enable us to distinguish the living mat- 
ter obtained from the body of an ape from that taken 
from a man, dog, fish, or lower form of life. But 
who will affirm that, therefore, all these different 
forms of living matter are one,' identical ? Although 
there may be no physical or chemical differences we 
know that the life-history of these several forms is 
very different, while the results of their living are 
sufficient to prove that they must have been diverse 
from the very first." (p. 282.) 

45. Virchovfs reply to materialism. To the fore- 
going criticisms of Dr. Beale we append the utter- 
ances of the illustrious Prussian naturalist, Yirchow, 
the author of the Cellular Pathology. In the congress 
of German naturalists held in Munich, in 1876, M. 
Yirchow objected to the demand made by Haeckel, 
that the theory of transformation should be introduced 
into the teaching of primary schools. He said : "With 
Darwinism the theory of spontaneous generation has 
again been brought to the front. I fully admit that 
the temptation is strong to add this crowning stone to 



THE PROBLEM OF LIFE. 51 

the theory of man's descent. There is something sat- 
isfactory in being able to admit that a certain favored 
group of atoms, Carbon & Co., were at a given mo- 
ment and under certain circumstances separated from 
ordinary coal and gave birth to the primitive plasson, 
and that the same process is being repeated to-day. It 
is true no one can adduce a single positive fact in ev- 
idence that such spontaneous generation ever took place, 
and that an inorganic mass, even of this firm of Carbon & 
Co., was ever transformed into an organic mass. Nev- 
ertheless, I admit that if we propose to imagine to our- 
selves how the first organic being could have originated 
there is no alternative but spontaneous generation, 
unless we recur to creation. Terbium non datior. 
But spontaneous generation is not demonstrated, and we 
shall be wise to wait for its demonstration. We remem- 
ber how lamentably all attempts have failed to find a 
place for it in tracing the passage of the most elementary 
forms from the inorganic to the organic kingdom. 
Haeckel will never be able to explain to us how, from 
the midst of this inorganic world in which nothing 
changes, life can come forth. The lapse of countless 
ages makes no change in mechanical laws. And if we 
go back to the periods of incandescence in the history 
of our planet we may fairly be reminded that in- 



52 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

tense heat is far more destructive than j3roductive of 
life." * 

46. Theory of organization causing life. That 
life is the result of organization has been a favorite 
form of speculation at different times, and has been 
revived by Professor Huxley's celebrated lecture on 
" The Physical Basis of Life." Huxley says : " Car- 
bon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, are all lifeless 
bodies. Of these carbon and oxygen unite, in certain 
proportions and under certain conditions, to give rise 
to carbonic acid ; hydrogen and oxygen produce water ; 
nitrogen and hydrogen give rise to ammonia. These 
new compounds, like the elementary bodies of which 
they are composed, are lifeless. But when they are 
brought together under certain conditions they give 
rise to the still more complex body, protoplasm, and 
this protoplasm exhibits the phenomena of life." Two 
very important " breaks," however, occur in " this 
series of steps." First, the " certain conditions " un- 
der which organisms arise are always the influence of 
pre-existent life. Secondly, Professor Huxley's pro- 
toplasm does not always exhibit the phenomena of 
life. He himself applies the term to white of egg, to 
roast mutton, to dead lobster, and to bread or other 

* Pretense's Study of Origins. 



THE PROBLEM OF LIFE. 53 

food, and he calls the process of digestion that of con- 
verting " the dead protoplasm into living protoplasm." 
Some "subtle influences," therefore, are needed to 
transform dead protoplasm into living matter or bio- 
plasm. Huxley declares that the properties of water 
result from the union of its chemical elements ; and 
the same must be true of protoplasm. " We do not 
assume that a something called ' aquosity ' entered into 
and took possession of the oxide of hydrogen as soon 
as it was formed," and he asks, " What better philosoph- 
ical status has ' vitality ' than ' aquosity ? ' " This an- 
ology of " aquosity " is rather an unfortunate one for 
his argument, although evidently intended as unan- 
swerable. No one knows better than Professor Hux- 
ley that " aquosity," which is a sarcastic synonym for 
" fluidity," cannot be applied to water in the frozen 
condition. It is then solid ice, although identical in 
its chemical composition with water. Its fluidity, or 
"aquosity," always results from the addition of "some- 
thing " called heat, whether we consider heat as a mode 
of motion or otherwise. So Professor Huxley's " dead 
protoplasm " must be subject to " subtle influences " 
before life or " vitality " can be manifested. 

Notwithstanding the materialistic terminology and 
arguments of Professor Huxley he insists that he is 



54 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

no materialist nor spiritualist, but an agnostic philos- 
opher of the school of Hume, knowing nothing of 
cause and effect but the order of succession. In his 
more recent utterances in the Fortnightly Review, in 
reply to Mr. Lilly, he renews his denial of materialism, 
ridicules spiritualism, exalts idealism, and professes 
agnosticism. The inconsistency of this sort of philos- 
ophy is well and pointedly exposed by Mr. Stirling in 
his celebrated reply to Huxley's lecture on protoplasm. 
He declares that, " Mr. Huxley, while devoting fifty 
paragraphs to our physiological immersion in the 
' materialistic slough,' grants but one and twenty to- 
ward our philosophical escape from it ; the fifty besides 
being, so to speak, in reality the w T ind, and the one and 
twenty only the whistle for it. What these latter say, 
in effect, is no more than this : that matter, being known 
not in itself, but only in its qualities, and cause and 
effect not in their nexus, but only in their sequence, 
matter may be spirit or spirit matter, cause effect or 
effect cause ; in short, for aught that Mr. Huxley more 
than phenomenally knows, this may be that or that 
this, first second or second first, but the conclusion 
shall be this, that he will lay out all our knowledge 
materially, and we may lay out all our ignorance im- 
materially, if we will. Which reasoning and conclu- 



THE PROBLEM OF LIFE. 55 

sion, I may merely remark, come precisely to tins : 
that Mr. Huxley, who, hoping yet to see each object 
(a pin, say) not in its qualities but in itself still, con- 
sistently antithetic, cannot believe in the extinction of 
fire by water or of life by the rope, for any reason or 
for any necessity that lies in the nature of the case, 
but simply for the habit of the thing, has not yet put 
himself at home with the metaphysical categories of 
substance and causality ; thanks, perhaps, to those 
guides of his whom we, amusing Britons that we are, 
bravely proclaim 'the foremost thinkers of the day.' ! "* 

Respecting the theory which ascribes life to organ- 
ization Coleridge says : " The position seems to me 
little less strange than as if a man should say that build- 
ing, with all the included handicraft of plastering, saw- 
ing, planing, etc., were the offspring of the house, and 
that the mason and carpenter were the result of a suite 
of chambers with the passages and staircases that lead 
to them." 

47. Theory of hylozoism, or matter essentially 
alive. Some theorists endeavor to escape the difficul- 
ties of bald materialism by clothing matter with 
spiritual attributes. " All theoretical science is built 
upon some form of the atomic theory. Those who 

* As Regards Protoplasm. By Stirling. 



56 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

disclaim belief in the reality of atoms are still forced 
to assume some molecular unit which is the substantial 
reality of material things, and whose properties con- 
dition all material manifestation. Accordingly those 
who adopt the notion that atoms are vortical rings in 
a f rictionless fluid, can do nothing with said fluid until 
they get their vortical rings — that is, until they get 
their atomic units." * One class overlooking the prop- 
erty of mass, or inertia, which is an essential charac- 
teristic of matter, adopt Boscovitch's theory that the 
atom is merely a center of force. From this it is an 
easy step to a new definition of matter, which shall 
make it something mystic, wonderful, plastic, and 
even living. Such was the hylozoism of the early 
Greeks, repeated by Hobbes and the French material- 
ists in the last century, and by Professor Tyndall in our 
own day. The latter declares that the notion that 
matter, as ordinarily conceived, can explain life 
and mind, is " absurb, monstrous, and fit only for the 
intellectual gibbet." He insists that matter can be 
defined only by observing what it can do. Of matter 
and force he says : "If life and thought be the very 
flower of both, any definition which omits life and 
thought must be inadequate, if not untrue." " This 

*Bowne's Studies in Tkrism. 



THE PROBLEM OF LIFE. 57 

doctrine is just vague enough to suit the materialist. 
By forgetting that atoms, if real, are individuals the 
doctrine can be turned into pantheism. By resuming 
the principle of individuality we can pass back to 
atomism. By judiciously remembering and forgetting 
we can be atomists and pantheists at pleasure. We 
can reduce every thing to molecular mechanics, and 
we can dilate on the unknowable ' mystery of matter.' 
By leaving the notion of matter quite undetermined 
it is also easy to deduce every thing from it. We 
have but to assume that all being is material, and en- 
large the notion to meet the exigency. If we only 
call it matter we can rely on common sense, taking 
the word in its ordinary meaning ; while by meaning 
something, no one knows what, but at all events some- 
thing quite out of the common, we shall be able to 
defend ourselves against the spiritualists. This indef- 
initeness is of great value in materialistic polemics. 
The argument is rather curious. We cannot tell 
what matter can do; therefore it may well explain 
mind. After a moment's stay in the potential mood 
nothing is easier than to pass into the indicative, and 
announce that matter is sufficient." " ' Matter will not 
explain thought and feeling,' says the spiritualist. 
' How do you know it will not ? ' asks the materialist. 



58 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

'Its known properties do not, of course, but its un- 
known properties do.' And this is an explanation ! 
As if the debate were about a name, or as if one 
speculator had not as much right to the unknown 
possible as another. Every-where else explanation of 
one thing by another must rest upon what we know ; 
but here explanation may rest upon what we do not 
know, and may pass for explanation still ! " "It is 
perfectly clear that if we give no definition of matter 
except that it is the cause of nature, and explain mind 
by spiritualizing or mysticising matter, the debate 
threatens to become a war of words." " Hylozoism 
does not explain mentality, but by an act of violence 
posits mentality and materiality side by side in the 
same subject. This juxtaposition of incommensurable 
qualities is mistaken for an explanation. The hylozois- 
tic revival is entirely due to the attempt to make mat- 
ter all-embracing. By consequence all principles and 
definitions are confounded, and the outcome is still 
greater confusion. ' Mind-stuff' and ' double-faced 
somewhats' are now playing an important part in 
materialistic arguments. The result is a school of 
philosophical mermaids, such as cannot be found this 
side of the earliest Greek speculation.''* 

*Bowne's Studies in Theism. 



THE PROBLEM OF LIFE. 50 

48. Theory of the correlation of forces. — Another 
favorite mode in which the materialistic argument is 
presented is based on what is termed " the correlation 
of forces," or, more correctly, " the conservation of en- 
ergy." According to this doctrine of modern physical 
science, heat, light, electricity, and magnetism are no 
longer considered to be substantial or independent ex- 
istences, but simply modes of motion in ordinary 
matter — forms of energy which are capable of mutual 
conversion. From this an explanation of vital phe- 
nomena seemed easy, and Dr. Carpenter, in an essay 
on the correlation of physical and vital forces, traces 
the generation of vital forces to the transformation of 
the light, heat, and chemical action supplied by the 
world around. The condition, inherent in the organ- 
ism, and derived from its progenitors, by which it 
assumes and maintains its typical form, he terms its 
germinal capacity, and says, " What the germ really 
supplies is not the form, but the directive agency ; thus 
rather resembling the control exercised by the super- 
intendent builder, who is charged with working out 
the design of the architect, than the bodily force of the 
workmen who labor under his guidance in the construc- 
tion of the fabric."* By this phraseology Dr. Carpen- 

* Carpenter's Correlation of Physical and Vital Forces. 



60 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

ter admits that something besides physical energy re- 
sides in the organism. The "directive agency" is 
plainly an independent power, distinct from what he 
calls " force." This is an equivocal method of attribut- 
ing the term " vital force" to the secondary and en- 
vironing powers rather than to the original " superin- 
tendent builder." To shift the meaning of terms adds 
nothing to our power of investigating truth, but leaves 
the real question untouched. So much of Dr. Car- 
penter's work is unexceptional that we regret to notice 
his attempt to maintain opposite and irreconcilable 
views. 

The doctrine of the conservation of energy has given 
rise to a large amount of astonishing rhetoric. One 
tells us that "the scientific idea of force isanoumenal 
integer, phenomenally differentiated into the glittering 
universe of things." Another declares that this law 
is " the highest law of all science ; not only does it 
control those radiant floods of power which fill the 
eternal spaces, bathing, warming, illuming, and vivify- 
ing our planet, but it rules the actions of men and 
regulates the march of terrestrial affairs." Professor 
Tyndall tells us that accordiug to this doctrine the sun 
is the source of life in plants and animals. Herbert 
Spencer has made it the basis of his system of philoso- 



THE PROBLEM OF LIFE. 61 

phy, and declares it to be the fundamental truth, 
"which, as being the basis of science, cannot be 
established by science." He says, " The sole truth 
which transcends experience by underlying it is the 
persistence of force." 

Such overwhelming assertions seem to imply that 
the identity of vital and physical force is universally 
admitted by scientific men and is unquestionable. But 
such is far from the truth. Their difference has often 
been pointed out. Dr. Beale says, " The real question 
is whether there is in addition to ordinary forces a force 
or power at work in living things of a nature distinct 
from any form or mode of ordinary force. Heat, 
light, electricity, etc., manifested in a living organism, 
are clearly of the same nature as heat, light, and elec- 
tricity manifested out of the body. "We know and ad- 
mit that physical forces are at work in the living body, 
but ask, is there not yet another internal force or 
power at work in the living body which is not physical 
or chemical ? Is not the potential energy of a given 
weight of fat and muscle exactly the same in a dead 
body as in a living one ? How, then, can potential 
energy be the same as vital force ? Does the law of 
the conservation of energy throw any light whatever 
upon the cause of the vibration of a single cilium ? 



62 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

Can any tiling be more monstrous than the dogma that 
the phenomena of development are due to inorganic 
forces alone, or that inflammation of a tissue results from 
increased motion imparted to its elements ? " 

" If the chemist admits that living matter possesses 
something which dead matter does not possess, and 
that this something transforms force and re-arranges 
the elements of matter, he admits the existence of a 
power or capacity which he does not attempt to ex- 
plain and which is altogether different from any forces 
which he knows any thing about." 

" I do not believe that any scientific statement ever 
made was less justified by known facts than the asser- 
tion that living things are ' the workmanship of the 
sun,' or that suns resolve themselves into living things. 
It is very strange, but nevertheless true, that those who 
teach us that 'suns may resolve themselves (I) into 
flora and fauna ' are quite unable to show how a very 
minute portion of sun becomes ' variously modified ' 
and resolves itself into a particle of living matter, 
such as a microscopic fungus, or a pus-corpuscle, or a 
cancer-cell, or any other definite living thing." * 

The prominence given to the doctrine of the 
conservation of energy at the present day and 

* Protoplasm. By Dr. Beale. 



THE PROBLEM OF LIFE. 63 

the persistence with which it is used as an ar- 
gument for materialism and atheism render it fitting 
that we should examine it still more minutely. From 
Studies in Theism, by Professor Bowne, of Boston 
University, we select the following trenchant crit- 
icism : 

" This general theorem of dynamics has been raised 
into importance by the mechanical theory of heat and 
the other molecular energies of matter. The discovery 
of their mechanical nature enables us to trace molar 
motion into molecular motion, and conversely ; and the 
determination of their mechanical equivalent enables 
us to say that the seeming loss of energy in case of 
molar collision is only apparent, the same amount of 
energy being reproduced in molecular forms. This 
discovery is a matter for just pride on the part of 
physics ; but our exaltation must never lead us into 
making extravagant claims. The doctrine in question 
is proved only for a theoretical physical system ; 
whether the actual system fulfils the theoretical con- 
ditions must be decided by observation and experiment. 
Thus far experiment has given a very high degree of 
probability to the doctrine in the physical realm ; but 
even there all questions are not answered. In partic- 
ular, electricity and magnetism furnish some trouble- 



64 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

some facts. Thus Tait and Thomson question Weber's 
law of electric currents, although it is in harmony with 
experience, because it conflicts with the law of conserva- 
tion. The dogmatism of this procedure is evident, for 
it is bj no means a first truth that natural forces must 
vary only with the space ; indeed, if we ask ourselves 
what ground for force variation there is in more or less 
of empty space we shall find ourselves puzzled to see 
any. The truth is it is purely a question of experience- 
and not of conceivability at all ; and if experience point 
to other laws than those which the doctrine of conser- 
vation contemplates we must admit them, no matter 
what the theoretical consequences may be. Still, we 
must allow as highly probable that, for physical agents 
left to themselves, the law is absolute. 

Remaining still in the physical realm it must be 
further pointed out that the appearance of simplicity 
which the doctrine lends to our physical theories is 
mostly misleading. When the various activities of the 
elements are all described as energy we are apt to fancy 
that we have reduced the many to one, but, in truth, 
these forms remain as mysterious as ever. We have 
discovered that one form of energy can give rise to 
another according to the measure of its own vis viva / 
but we have no hint of why or how one form becomes 



THE PROBLEM OF LIFE. 65 

another. We know that heat has a mechanical equiv- 
alent ; but heat remains as mysterious and as separate 
as ever. We know that the other forms of energy 
also have mechanical equivalents ; but still each one re- 
mains as peculiar as before. They are all modes of 
motion, it is said ; but what is the nature of these 
motions ? How are they produced and propagated ? 
In what does a heat-motion differ from an electric or 
magnetic motion ? If alike the effects would be alike, 
but if different what is the difference ? Some phys- 
icists are inclined to assume that the heat-motion is an 
expansion and contraction of the atom upon itself, and 
not a vibration. Here is a reahn of mystery and of 
almost total darkness. In short, why many forms of 
energy and not one, or why so many and not more ? 
We are shut up to the assumption that these differ- 
ences must rest upon a complex qualitative nature of 
the atoms themselves, whereby these diverse manifes- 
tations are made possible. Upon this inner mystery 
the doctrine of conservation throws no light. We have 
to assume this complex qualitative nature ; we cannot 
construe or deduce it. We must guard ourselves from 
thinking that grouping various forms of energy under 
a common name in any way abolishes their differences. 

Sir John Herschel has a word on this point which still 
5 



66 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

deserves consideration : ' Nor (while accepting with 
all due admiration as approximate truths these great 
revelations as to the mutual convertibility of these cor- 
relatives according to the measure of vis viva appro- 
priate to each) shall we advance any nearer to a 
rational theory of any one of them till it shall be 
shown with much more distinctness than at present ap- 
pears in what those molecular movements themselves 
consist ; by what forces (in the dynamic acceptation of 
the term) they are controlled ; in what manner or by 
what mechanism they are propagated from one body 
to another, and how their mutual intercon version is ef- 
fected.' 

" Energy must always be the energy of something. 
Physical energy is the energy of the physical elements, 
and its so called transformation, while practically al- 
lowable, is only a figure of speech. Thus, when a 
moving body puts another in motion and comes to rest 
itself, we do not think of the motion of the first as 
transferred to the second, and for the reason that mo- 
tion cannot exist without a subject. The motion of 
the first ceases, that of the second begins, but nothing 
is transferred or transformed. In like manner energy 
cannot exist without a subject. But the elements are 
so related to one another that they mutually condition 



THE PROBLEM OF LIFE. 67 

one another's action — that is, the activity of one may 
furnish the conditions of another's activity. In such 
a case the activity of the second will be greater or less 
according as the antecedent activity was greater or 
less. We may say in general that the subsequent ac- 
tivity will vary with the vis viva of the preceding one. 
If the resultant activity be not of the same kind as 
the antecedent still the same relation of intensity will 
hold. Speaking loosely, we say in such a case that en- 
ergy has been transferred and transformed ; but in 
truth no such thing has happened. Every element has 
acted out of itself, but the conditions of its action have 
been furnished by antecedent action, and the intensity 
of the consequent depends upon the vis viva of the 
antecedent. This is all the transference and transfor- 
mation of energy mean, even in physics. There is no 
mysterious and ethereal something gliding from one 
thing to another. !No element receives any thing 
from other elements except that they furnish the con- 
ditions upon which it may manifest its own power of 
action. No a priori reason can be given for such a 
relation, and still, less why the activity of one should 
disappear in inciting that of another. To be sure, the 
law of conservation would not hold in that case ; but 
this law is purely a contingent one. 



68 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

With this understanding of the transformation of 
energy the question whether thought is not trans- 
formed physical energy is seen to involve mental con- 
fusion. Whether simple mental subjects exist can be 
determined only by psychological analysis ; but, if they 
do the transformation of energy in the case of thought 
is at least no greater than in the case of the physical 
elements themselves. The nerves would not supply 
the mind any thing but the conditions for unfolding 
its own proper powers ; just as when a ball is thrown 
into the air it does not receive attractive force from 
the motion, but is put in a position for manifesting its 
own inner attraction. In the reaction of body and 
soul nothing would pass into the soul and nothing 
would come out of it. Whether sensation and per- 
ception are attended with any loss of vis viva in the 
brain molecules is unknowm. It may be that if w T e 
could trace the nervous action w r e should find each 
physical antecedent completely exhausted in the phys- 
ical consequent, and should get no hint of the thought- 
series which the physical-series summons. It may also 
be that physical energy is expended in rousing the soul 
to react with sensation and thought. A positive de- 
cision is impossible and needless. However it may 
be, there is no transformation, except in the sense that 



THE PROBLEM OF LIFE. 69 

nervous action supplies the occasion upon which the 
mind develops its own proper activity ; for this is all 
that transformation means in any case. The pretended 
deduction from the doctrine of conservation, that vital, 
mental, and social forces are only transformed sun- 
shine, must be at once dismissed as simple moonshine." 

" Of course uo one imagines that vital and spon- 
taneous agents, if they exist, are likely to upset all the 
laws of energy and put physics to shame. On the 
contrary, we should expect in a rational system to find 
them taking all lower forces and energies into their 
service. ' Life,' says Balfour Stewart, ' is not a bully 
who swaggers out into the open universe, upsetting the 
laws of energy in all directions, but rather a consum- 
mate strategist who, sitting in his secret chamber before 
his wires, directs the movements of a great army.' 
Aristotle defined life as the cause of form in organ- 
isms, and no later definition has equaled his in either 
simplicity or adequacy. Certainly, if we hold that a 
living agent is any thing substantial, we shall have to 
allow that its main function in the body is directive." * 

49. The cosmojilastic theory. The cosmoplastic 
theory of life differs from hylozoism by attributing 
vital power to the universe as a whole, instead of con- 

* Bowne's Studies in Theism. 



70 PHYSIOL 00 Y OF TEE SOUL. 

sidering it inherent in elemental matter. From some 
passages in Seneca, Cudworth traces the opinion to 
certain stoic philosophers, but it is seldom proposed in 
modern times except in rhetorical or semi-poetical 
garb. Thus Unger, a German botanist, says : " The 
key to the mystery of vegetable life lies in the prim- 
itively-similar foundation of the animal and vegetable 
kingdom from which, indeed, both have sprung, but 
have branched off in different directions. The animal 
nature is in the plant as it were caged, and this im- 
prisonment is expressed throughout its entire existence 
in its formation and relation to the animal kingdom. 
They are the tears of Cypria, the blood of Hyacinth, 
which in the form and color of the flower whisper to 
us a melancholy strain. The complaining Dryad ex- 
presses the whole soul of the plant. Thus in melan- 
choly seclusion does the plant achieve its life-destiny. 
But the fettered and slumbering world-spirit which 
here scarce dares breathe is the same which in animals 
bursts its bonds forever, and, lastly, sings its hallelujah 
in man." * This imaginative and paganized panthe- 
ism has no better foundation than that which attributes 
life to all material atoms. It throws no light on the 
question, What causes the difference between the liv- 

* Unger's Botanical Letters, 



THE PROBLEM OF LIFE. 71 

ing and tlie non-living ? If the world spirit is bound 
in vegetables, free in animals, and glorified in man, 
how did it occur ? What makes the difference ? 

50. The anima mundi. The doctrine of a soul of 
the world, anima mundi, is a very ancient one. From 
the beginning of philosophic thought we may trace 
the hypothesis of an immaterial force inseparable 
from matter, but giving to matter its form and move- 
ment. Pythagoras acknowledged such a force, but 
taught that there was an infinitely perfect being above 
it. Plato could not conceive how pure spirit could act 
directly upon matter, and taught the soul of the world 
the source of all life, sensibility, and movement. This 
anima mundi or demiurge of the Alexandrian school, 
occupied the place of God in the Stoic system, and re- 
appeared under the name of Archmus, in the systems 
of Agrippa, Paracelsus, and Yan Helmont. Some- 
thing similar occurs in Cudworth's system under the 
name of a plastic nature, which is considered the 
universal agent of physical phenomena, the cause of 
all forms of organization, and the spring of all the 
movements of matter. Barthez and others held that 
there is a vital principle distinct from the organization 
of living bodies, which directs all their acts and func- 
tions which are only vital — that is, without feeling or 



72 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

thought. Their doctrine is vitalism. The older doc- 
trine of Stahl was called animism, according to which 
the soul, or anima mundi, presides over sensibility 
and thought as well as all the functions and acts of 
the organism. * 

51. A spiritual psyche is sufficient explanation of 
life. The differences between the living and the non- 
living cannot be explained by any materialistic theory 
whatever, but they are accounted for by the admission 
of an individual psyche in each organism. Sponta- 
neous generation, which Virchow declared "is not 
demonstrated," is as inconceivable as existence spring- 
ing from non-existence. Organization, by which, ac- 
cording to Huxley, chemical elements are " brought 
together under certain conditions," necessarily implies 
an organizing power. Hylozoism, or attributing spirit- 
ual attributes to matter not only begs the question, but 
is an inconsistent juxtaposition of opposite and antag- 
onistic properties in the same particles at the same time 
and place. The theory of correlation of force is not 
only inapplicable, but fails to account for the correla- 
tion in living things. The cosmoplastic theory and the 
doctrine of the anima mundi do not account for the 
variety of living beings. We are, therefore, com- 

* See Fleming's Vocabulary of Philosophy. 



THE PROBLEM OF LIFE. 73 

pelled to admit a spiritual cause for vital phenom- 
ena. 

The action of spirit upon matter, or matter upon 
spirit, is no more inconceivable than the real existence 
of either, and as the law of parsimony reasonably for- 
bids us to multiply causes unnecessarily, a rational du- 
alism is sufficient explanation of vital phenomena with- 
out resorting to the theory of an additional entity 
intermediate between mind and matter, as maintained 
by some. It is just as difficult to imagine how spirit 
can act on an archceus or separate life essence as upon 
the body itself. That life is no entity or thing, but a 
series of activities resulting from the union of matter 
and spirit, is the doctrine of all the religions of man- 
kind has been maintained by the majority of men in 
all ages, and is perfectly accordant with scientific 
research. A living thing is a spiritual essence which 
clothes itself with material particles after a form and 
according to an order or law of its own kind. This 
view of the cause of life has been well expressed by 
Professor Goodsir, of Edinburgh University, the 
eminent anatomist to whom Virchow dedicated his 
great work on Cellular Pathology. In an essay on 
Life and Organization, he says : " Every living organ- 
ized body — that is, every individual plant and animal, 



74 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

according to its kind or species — contains or is con- 
tained in a psyche, which is not a mere co-ordinated 
system of material forces, but a distinct essence, the 
source more particularly of the psychical manifesta- 
tions. 

" We are alike ignorant of the mode in which mat- 
ter acts on matter, as of the mode in which mind and 
matter react. As, however, we do know that mind 
does act on matter, and conversely, as in the instances 
of the will inducing physical currents in the cells and 
fibers of the brain and spinal marrow, and of physical 
currents in the spinal marrow and brain inducing sen- 
sation, it would be equally unphilosophical to deny as 
to assert that psychical power and physical force do 
immediately influence one another in the living organ- 
ized body, or to assume as an element in physiological 
research that the indwelling or containing psyche is 
the source of organic form, or that it influences chem- 
ico-physical forces to that effect. 

" I therefore state, provisionally, that the corporeal 
structure of the organized being is co-ordinated with 
the specific endowments of its psyche, so that they act 
and react harmoniously. 

" The psyche is latent in the plant, as it is in the 
higher animal during its embryo condition. 



THE PROBLEM OF LIFE. 75 

" In the animal series the psyche, distinct for each in- 
dividual and specific for each species, is more highly 
endowed according to the elevation of the animal in 
the scale. 

" The psyche regulates the actions and habits of the 
animal in accordance with its corporeal structure, and 
the conditions of its existence has a code of laws to 
which we apply the term instinct. 

" The psychological constitution of the animal and 
its peculiar form of consciousness are conditioned by 
the instinct. 

"Physiological considerations, psychological and 
philosophical induction, and the precise statements of 
revelation prove that man, in addition to his body, with 
its chemico-physical properties, and his psyche, which 
is the co-ordinated form of his organization and the 
source of his instincts, appetites, and passions, pos- 
sesses also his pneum a, which constitutes his personal- 
ity, is the essence of his peculiar self-consciousness, the 
ground of his proper intellect, and the conditioning 
element of his moral faculty and of his religious belief. 
It is the possession of this jpneuma which distinguishes 
man from the animal. Possessing, like the animal, a 
body and a psyche, he may descend, if he will, to the 
level of the brute. But lie has also had it put in his 



76 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

power, in virtue of his pneuma, to participate in the 
conditions of a higher sphere of existence. 

" I am compelled, therefore, to assume, as the guid- 
ing principle of my physiological studies, that the 
living organism is a co-ordinated system of psychical 
powers and physical forces, and that except as part of 
such a system organization cannot occur." * 

While agreeing in general with the foregoing 
extract from Professor Goodsir biological facts com- 
pel our belief that the living organism is not merely a 
co-ordinated system of psychical and physical powers, 
but that the psyche in every instance influences the 
chemico-physical forces so as to produce specific form 
and vital functions. In living matter physical nature 
is subordinate to the spirit. In the life-history of 
every organism we trace the agency of something dis- 
tinct from and superior to matter, controlling, select- 
ing, molding, assimilating, or discarding matter for 
its own purposes and after its own peculiar mode or 
law of action. That which manifests such palpable 
effects of its presence must be a real existence. Its 
power of control over matter and physical laws proves 
its superiority to, as well as its distinction from, matter. 
It is matter's master, not its slave. It is the workman, 

*Gooclsir , s Anatomical Memoirs, v. I, p. 297. 



THE PROBLEM OF LIFE. 77 

the builder, the chemist, while elemental atoms are the 
raw materials for its use, and physical or psychical 
forces the tools with which it works. 

52. Difference of living and non-living too radical 
to he physical. It is not dissimilarity merely between 
living and non-living matter which justified the con- 
clusion that the living being possesses a spiritual or 
psychical entity. It is the character of the dissimilarity 
which points to this. Amorphous and crystalline mat- 
ter are dissimilar. So also are solid, fluid, and gaseous 
bodies. These differences result from real causes. 
The molecules of crystals possess a special polarity 
which constrains them to cohere along certain axes. 
Solid, fluid, or gaseous forms depend on the varying 
distances of the molecules produced by heat. In these 
and similar instances science can refer to physical or 
chemical forces which suffice to account for the phe- 
nomena. The dissimilarity between the living and 
the non-living cannot be so accounted for. Motions, 
apparently self -originated, against gravity and in differ- 
ent directions while the environing forces are un- 
changed ; chemical transformations and appropriations 
unknown to the inorganic world ; new forms of mo- 
lecular coalescence which are not produced without 
the influence of vital force ; construction and repro- 



78 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

duction according to a certain type or determinate 
idea which implies either conscious or unconscious in- 
telligence, show differences which are radical, and 
must in all reason be ascribed to a cause distinct from 
physical order and material. 

53. Life not in material atoms. The continuance 
of life in new atoms after the rejection of old particles 
shows that the cause of life is different from the atoms. 
Effete or discarded atoms may be appropriated to the 
use of other organisms while other atoms take their 
place. In this manner the same atoms may have 
served the life-force of several distinct organisms. It 
is evident, therefore, that the life of organisms depends 
on something different from material atoms. As mat- 
ter and spirit are the only objects of thought possible 
to us, and life is plainly seen to be distinct from mat- 
ter, it must depend upon spirit. 

"This psychical essence varies in its endowments 
in different species of animals. It is specific for 
each species, individual in each individual. It mani- 
fests itself less and less distinctly, and is evidently 
more simple in its character the lower it is in the scale 
of being. In plants it is not manifested in proper 
psychical acts. 

" Here, however, it must be recollected that in the 



THE PROBLEM OF LIFE. 79 

embryos of the higher animals the so-called mind of 
the animal is latent, and that in man, before birth, the 
entire psychical and spiritual elements of his constitu- 
tion are in the same condition. The psychical essence 
exists only potentially in the embryo of the higher 
animals. It is suddenly and fully evolved after its 
birth by the influence of the senses under the peculiar 
conditions of the instinct. In man, again, it is more 
slowly evolved by the influence of the senses, condi- 
tioned by his peculiar spiritual self-consciousness. 

" I have alluded to the latent or potential condition of 
the psyche in the embryo of the higher animal and of 
man for the purpose of showing that there is nothing un- 
philosophical in the admission of a psyche in the plant. 
We are quite entitled to state as a legitimate hypothesis 
that in every individual plant there is an indwelling 
psyche more simply endowed than that of the lowest 
animal ; specific for each species of plant and there- 
fore incapable of further evolution, never manifesting 
itself in psychical acts appreciable to us and performing 
only the lowest function of the animal psyche, consti- 
tuting the psychical form in the presence or midst of 
which the organization is co-ordinated.' ' * 

The problem of independent psychical manifestation, 

*Goodsir's Anatomical Memoirs. 



80 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

as well as that of the higher realm of spirit, is different 
from that now under consideration. We have found 
through biology the vital properties which character- 
ize all living matter, both animal and vegetable, and see 
evident proof that these properties arise from the 
presence and agency of a psyche or immaterial essence. 
The difference of power, however, in the various kinds 
of animated existence is as evident as the different 
chemical elements of matter. There is as much room 
for diversity in the spiritual as in the material realm 
of nature. 

The differences among living beings are exemplified 
by the experiments made in modern times to determine 
the physiological action of medicinal substances. It is 
found impossible to produce in animals the greater 
part of the diseases which affect the human system, 
while the actions of drugs differ in different species. 
Thus nitro-glycerine, which has such energetic action 
on man, has but slight effects upon the dog or the hare. 
Ten drops of a one-per-cent. solution produce toxic 
phenomena in man, while three drachms introduced 
into the system of a dog and a proportionate amount 
in a hare will not produce symptoms of poisoning. 

54. A psyche in each organism. We have already 
seen — Sections 19-35 — that the inherent spontaneous 



THE PROBLEM OF LIFE. 81 

motions, selective affinities, constructive tendencies, 
and reproductive power of living matter are without 
analogies among the non-living, and are totally inex- 
plicable by physical and chemical laws, showing that 
the psyche not only controls physical law, as in the 
production of new forms by molecular coalescence, 
and chemical law, as in the change of chemical 
affinities, but is of an entirely different nature. 
Spontaneity, selection, constructing and determining 
ideas, carry us out of the realm of matter altogether, 
yet these principles appear in every jelly-speck of 
living matter throughout the world, proving the 
presence of an immaterial element in each organism. 

55. Essential differences between living and non- 
living. A striking difference between living and non- 
living matter is seen in the fact that the chemical 
composition and physical surroundings of livino* 
matter do not indicate its functions nor the nature of 
its transformations. No experience with the micro- 
scope, nor with the laws of natural science, will 
enable an observer to tell what a particle of living 
matter will do, nor what kind of tissue or structure it 
will become. It is not so with non-living matter. 
Its chemical composition, with the materials and 

forces, in contact with it, always indicates to scientific 
6 



82 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

experience the changes which will occur, either as to 
form, composition, or function. Thus the action of 
hydrochloric acid on carbonate of soda always pro- 
duces common salt with effervescence of carbonic 
acid. Thus all the experiments of physics and 
reactions of chemistry are confidently anticipated, 
since they belong to the domain of mechanical or 
material law. It is not so with living matter. 
Chemical analysis of a portion reveals in it only 
carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen. It is bathed 
with a nutrient fluid containing similar chemical ele- 
ments with a little sulphur, phosphorus, or lime, yet, 
under the influence of the same physical stimuli, it 
will develop structures of diverse form and com- 
position and activities. 

In the non-living change of structure is always 
necessary to change of properties or functions. 
Sometimes, as in allotropism, different substances 
have the same chemical composition, as graphite and 
the diamond, the allotropic forms of sulphur, phos- 
phorus, etc., but in these cases chemists agree that 
there is different arrangement of the structural atoms 
or molecules. In living matter functions change 
without appreciable change of structure, and no 
results of form, composition, or function can be pred- 



THE PROBLEM OF LIFE. 83 

icated upon material or upon chemical phenomena. 
So far as physics and chemistry can tell, the bioplasts 
which form nerve are exactly like those which con- 
struct muscle or bone, and the differentiation of form 
or activity is plainly caused, not by intrinsic material 
diversity, but by a power which eludes both the 
microscope and the chemical test. Why the external 
layer of the blastoderm in the ovum should form 
epidermis and brain and the middle layer muscular 
and vascular apparatus — why some epithelial cells 
should absorb and others secrete fluids — why the 
epithelial lining of the bladder is impermeable, and 
that of the stomach resistant to the action of gastric 
juice during life, when they act so differently as soon 
as life departs — are questions which can never be 
answered by physical science, yet they are but a few 
of the subjects embraced in that of vitality. 

56. Divine intelligence in vital phenomena. Some 
of the phenomena of life are so wonderful and so 
indicative of more than human skill and foreknowl- 
edge that we are reminded of Dr. Carpenter's dis- 
tinction between " the architect," " the superintendent 
builder," and "the workman." The first is the 
divine Creator of all things, the second the psyche, or 
"directive agency," of the germ, and the third the 



84 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

physical forces which are guided " in the construction 
of the fabric." 

When we consider that the eye, " useless without 
light and formed for light, was produced in utter 
darkness, it is difficult indeed to understand how any 
one can venture to adopt the belief that the various 
arrangements of tissues are due to the operation of 
external circumstances and the properties of the mere 
matter of the body. From the very first the perfect 
form the organ was to assume must, as it were, have 
been determined and foreseen. To say that the fully- 
formed eye existed potentially in the masses of bio- 
plasm from which its tissues were formed indicates 
neither scientific knowledge nor a love of accuracy 
nor candor. The very matter was absent out of which 
these tissues were to be formed, and yet their forma- 
tion was prepared for and, as it were, anticipated from 
the very first. 

"All the early and most important changes in 
the development of an eye cannot be attributed 
to the operation of any external conditions what- 
ever. They must be due to forces or powers act- 
ing from within and influencing the matter consti- 
tuting the bioplasm at the time, and these forces and 
powers exhibit nothing whatever in common with 



THE PROBLEM OF LIFE. 85 

any known forces, properties or powers of non-living 
matter." * 

Dr. Beale also reminds us that inherited peculiarities 
of structure, which are not evident until forty or fifty 
years have passed since the original germ-speck origi- 
nated in the parent, affect pounds weight of matter 
not one grain of which was acquired until long after 
every atom of the original germ has been removed. 
It certainly requires a wonderful capacity in a mate- 
rialist's imagination to attribute the cause of such 
peculiarities to non-existent matter. Although the 
matter has not yet been acquired in the instance 
referred to, yet the psyche exists with all its " directive 
agency." 

Closely connected with this part of the subject is 
the healing power of living matter (Section 32). This 
glimpse into the ultimate plan of the great Architect 
is calculated to impress us with devout reverence, as if 
we had stood with Moses at the burning bush and had 
heard the voice, " Put off thy shoes from thy feet, for 
the place whereon thou standest is holy ground." 
Xature and revelation are not antagonistic to each 
other, but consistent and complementary parts of 
divine government, and " the Lamb slain from the 

* Beale' s Bioplasm. 



86 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

foundation of the world " is testified to by all healing 
and mediatorial ministries whatever. There is no 
necessary reason for any healing in nature. If in a 
fractured bone the effused bioplasts turn from the 
work of ordinary construction to the repair of the 
injury, under the instinctive and directing agency of 
the psyche, it is a gracious provision of the Supreme 
Governor and a direct contravention of " the law of 
sin and death." 

In inorganic nature there is intelligent provision 
for the prevention of evil — as when water, contrary to 
the general law of matter, expands when it freezes, so 
as to form a covering on lakes and rivers which would 
otherwise freeze solid — but there is no reparation of 
injury. In the organic world the principle of media- 
torial restoration prevails. The transformation of the 
injured tissue of the cell-wall into cork tissue, as seen 
in vegetables, and the healing processes in animal tis- 
sues, are not only prophetic of redemption, but illus- 
trate the eternal principle embodied in the incarnate 
Son of God — the revealer of essential Deity. 

59. Molecular and bodily death. Death occurs 
when the cause of life is removed. r When the spir- 
itual essence or psyche ceases to act upon the matter 
of the organism we say that the body is dead, and then 



THE PROBLEM OF LIFE. 87 

the process of disorganization begins. There is a two- 
fold application of the term death to the organism — 
the death of the organism as a whole, called somatic 
or bodily death, and molecular death, or the cessation 
of vital activity in the molecules of the body. 

Life, or vital activity, begins in a single molecule of 
living matter and in the complex forms of organisms is 
propagated as a psychical force, more or less modified, 
from molecule to molecule, or from cell to cell, as 
flame kindles other combustibles into flame, or as 
magnetism may be conveyed by one steel bar to hun- 
dreds of others. 

Molecular death is a constant attendant upon vital 
activities. It is arrested in dormant life, as when a 
seed or egg remains inactive, but goes on regularly in 
the ordinary course of things. The living particles of 
each tissue are changed into formed material and then 
pass into decay, while other bioplasts take their 
places and keep up the active dance of life. When 
the psyche, or spiritual cause of life, is removed from 
the organism, or a limb or other organ is removed 
from the agency of the psyche, the molecular activi- 
ties gradually cease. Hair may continue to grow for 
awhile on a corpse, or rattlesnake poison and other 
glandular secretions continue to be formed for a short 



88 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

time. Muscular fiber and nerve substance retain 
a while tlieir power, but, uninfluenced by the energizing 
spirit, the vital activities gradually cease and decom- 
position ensues. 

58. Objects of biological study. The science of 
biology, rationally interpreted, brings us to the borders 
of a spiritual world, and shows us realities as true, as 
numerous, and as diversified, on the spiritual side, as 
are the objects of sense which can be weighed and 
measured by physical instruments. In bioplasm, or 
living matter, we have the union of material and 
psychical forces, forming a central point or philo- 
sophical unit from which we may and ought to discuss 
rationally the subject of psychology in one direction, 
and that of physiology in the other. Both mental 
and physical phenomena are proper objects of biolog- 
ical study, nor can a true anthropology, or science of 
human nature, be established without considering liv- 
ing matter and its functions as exhibited in all other 
beings, as well as those facts which belong to the 
sphere of consciousness. 



MIND AND BRAIN. 89 



CHAPTER II. 

Mind and Brain 



OUTLINE OF ARGUMENT. 

Mend, psyche, or soul, is not life, but the cause of life, and 
the brain is but one of its organs. It is incarnate in the 
entire living tissue, and not merely in brain and nerves. 
Histology and cerebral experimentation indicate sensori- 
motor activity rather than intellectual functions in brain 
and nerves. Cerebral dominance is disproved by the 
training of idiots, by comparative anatomy, by aceph- 
alous children, by diseases and injuries of brain, by 
aphasia, and by mental derangements. The doctrine of 
the psyche meets all the facts and indicates possible im- 
mortality. 



1. Relation of mind and brain no easy study. 
The relation of mind and brain lias been the subject 
of much discussion, especially among those who do 
not discriminate between the psychical and bodily 
functions of the organism. 

From the manner in which it is usually treated it 
would seem as if the entire question was limited to 
the determination of the nature and properties of a 
thin layer of gray matter lying upon the outside of 



90 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

the brain. But unless our physiology is content to be 
incomplete, and a mere echo of opinion, the matter 
cannot be disposed of so easily. 

2. Mind the cause of vital activity. Some writers, 
as Abercrombie, Reid, and Sir William Hamilton, em- 
ploy the word mind to represent the intellectual part 
of human nature — that in man which thinks and wills, 
remembers and reasons ; and this is the most common 
use of the word. Webster, among other literary uses, 
defines it as the entire spiritual nature, or the soul. J. 
Stuart Mill says " the mind is but a series of feelings." 
Bastian thinks the term should include "all uncon- 
scious nerve-actions as well as those which are attended 
with consciousness." This latter view expresses the 
dictum of what has been termed cerebral psychology, 
which claims that the brain and nervous system are 
the substance of the soul, and that all psychical phe- 
nomena are explicable by the activity of the nerve- 
structure. The study of biology exhibits so many 
selective and volitional phenomena in the primitive 
forms of life, where no nervous structure is found, 
and even in elementary bioplasm itself, that it is not 
improper to use the term mind to express the funda- 
mental cause of vital activity or the organizing and 
directing power (the psyche) which exhibits itself not 



MIND AND BRAIN. 91 

only in intellect, but is influential in every organ and 
f miction, and is manifested in every vital process. In 
this sense it is just as proper to say that the mind 
secretes as that the mind thinks ; that the mind causes 
the motions of the living particles of the body, as well 
as reasons or forms pictures in the imagination. It 
is also as appropriate to use the word mind in reference 
to the simpler forms of being as to man himself. The 
power which exists in the living jelly of the arm of a 
rhizopod gives evidence that it is sensitive and voli- 
tional, as well as digestive and reproductive, and in- 
stincts of various kinds are seen in vegetables as well 
as animals. 

3. Porter on identity of life and soul. Dr. Noah 
Porter, in his work on the " Human Intellect," argues 
that the progress of physiology and the careful study 
of psychical phenomena favor the theory that life and 
soul are identical. A more exact statement would 
place the soul and life in the relation of cause and 
effect. Biology has confirmed the view of those early 
philosophers who taught that the real essence of each 
living thing, either plant or animal, is an agent distinct 
from the body, called its psyche, soul, or mind, which 
is the formal cause of its structure and functions. 

Dr. Porter has exhibited most of the arguments 



92 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

in favor of a special vital force in organized beings, 
differing from all chemical and mechanical forces 
whatever. He shows that every living being origi- 
nates from a being that is already organized or living, 
and that " the doctrine of the evolution of the organic 
from the inorganic, as held by Darwin and Herbert 
Spencer, is founded on a special metaphysical theory 
resting on analogies violently strained from observed 
facts, but not confirmed by a single observed event or 
experimentum cruris" He claims that the process of 
nutrition, or growth, is peculiar both as to material 
and method, and is utterly inexplicable by mechanical 
or chemical forces or laws. He argues that growth in 
a living being proceeds on a definite intelligent plan, 
with adaptation of structure, form and function, to the 
end of the individual and of the species. He shows 
that there is a constant change of material in living 
forms, while their integrity of being and of form re- 
mains. He refers also to the fact that injuries to 
organized beings are largely susceptible of repair, in a 
way very different to any thing known in physics 
or chemistry. These considerations force the conclu- 
sion, shared by many of the most eminent physiologists, 
that there is an organic or vital force in every living 
being. This force, or vital principle, Dr. Porter con- 



MIND AND BRAIN 93 

siders to be the same as that of psychical activity. In 
support of this opinion he shows that vital phenomena 
precede the psychical in the order of time ; that the 
energy of the two is proportional ; that some activities 
of life, like the so-called vegetative functions, as 
growth, digestion, and sleep, draw upon the higher 
faculties, as if absorbing a common stock of energy ; 
and that the conscious activities of the soul depend on 
certain conditions and excitements of which it is uncon- 
scious. He shows also that the soul acts upon the 
body, is adapted to it, molds it, and is manifested 
by it. 

4. Life not an entity. The opinion which we re- 
gard as most philosophical and accurate does not re- 
gard life and soul as identical, but related as cause and 
effect. It teaches that all the phenomena peculiar to 
a living being result from the influence of a spiritual 
essence (soul or psyche) united with the body. Life 
is a series of complex activities in an organized body 
in union with a soul. The arguments of Dr. Porter 
respecting the existence of vital force and its identity 
with psychical activity apply with equal force to the 
support of this view, while the law of parsimony for- 
bids us to consider life as a distinct entity or tertium 
quid. 



94 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

5. Opinions respecting mind. The belief that the 
soul is an immaterial substance united to the body and 
the cause of physical life has been prevalent in all 
ages, and has been shared not only by the rude and 
uncultivated, but also by the leading thinkers of all 
times. The Greek philosophers, the Christian fathers, 
the metaphysicians of the Middle Ages, and the major- 
ity of scientific men at the present day unite in this 
opinion. Yet it has been greatly opposed in every 
period of history by those who adopt the dogma that 
every thing has been evolved from one material sub- 
stratum of being. The -past two decades witnessed a 
most remarkable degree of zeal and activity in the at- 
tempt to prove the soul to be a nonentity, and every 
branch of science and literature was pressed into serv- 
ice. The strict logic of the evolutional philosophy 
impelled many, like Haeckel, to the utmost verge of 
mechanical materialism^ and some, as Moleschott, 
Yogt, Buchner, and Clifford, were more frank and 
outspoken than considerate, and presented their views 
in language which shocked the moral sense of the 
Christian world. Others, like Herbert Spencer and 
his disciples, sought to render materialism more ac- 
ceptable by covering it with a veil of sonorous but 
nebulous verbosity. Among the latter we find Bain, 



t 



MIND AND BRAIN 95 

who argues that matter and mind— the physical and 
mental parts of organization—are u a double-faced 
unity." Although regarded by some as the legitimate 
conclusion of modern research this is a most unsatis- 
factory and inconsistent theory, since it implies that 
contradictory or essentially opposite properties belong 
to the same thing at the same time and place. This 
method of renewing the old materialism is a species of 
legerdemain in thought and language wdiich is utterly 
contrary to scientific precision. We can as easily 
imagine a round square, or a black- white body, or any 
thing else inconsistent with itself, as to conceive a re- 
ality in such metaphysical gymnastics. 

6. Mind or soul identical with psychic and vital 
force. If with Webster we regard the words " mind " 
and " soul " as synonyms, and accept the reasoning 
which, ascribes a spiritual cause to all vital phenomena, 
we greatly enlarge the common meaning of the term 
" mind." We consider it to be the organizing and 
directing power in each living body, not only exhibit- 
ing itself as intellect, but influential in every organ and 
function, and manifested in every vital process. This 
view is supported by the opinions of many eminent 
physiologists. Professor Nicholson, of Edinburgh, in 
an essay read before the Victoria Institute, of London, 



96 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

on " Life and its Physical Basis," says, " I cannot fail 
to recognize that there exists in every living being 
some actual force independent of, and superior to, the 
protoplasm of which its substance is composed. By 
this force all the activities of the living organism are 
controlled and directed, and we must suppose that it 
differs in degree, if not in kind, in different organisms. 
To designate such a force as ' vital ' is but to use a term 
which we cannot philosophically define, but of its 
actual existence we can nevertheless have no doubt. 
It is, in fact, the indwelling psyche which forms the 
real essence of all forms of living matter, from the 
humblest alga up to man himself, and without which 
' life,' in its proper sense, would have no existence." 

In the International Medical Congress at Washing- 
ton, D. C.j 1887, several papers were presented on the 
identity of vital and psychic force, and favorably dis- 
cussed. 

7. Organs or instruments of the mind. If mind is 
the agent whose power produces vital activities in an 
organism, and by the presence of which it is distin- 
guished from inorganic nature, it is evident that the 
brain cannot be considered its organ more than any 
other part of the body. All vital functions, whether 
performed consciously or unconsciously, as selection 



MIND AND BRAIN 97 

and absorption of food, secretion and sensation, depend 
upon the presence of the spiritual nature just as much 
as conscious thought or other affection. Consciousness 
is not essential to mind, since it is suspended in deep 
sleep or a swoon, and mind is not more nearly united 
to brain substance in the living organism than it is to 
muscle or gland or bone. Each structure of the body 
is an implement of some power or faculty of the mind, 
or is used by it for certain purposes. Some faculties 
are limited to special organs, as sight and hearing, and 
some use the totality of the organism, as in general 
sensibility. The instruments of some faculties are un- 
known ; indeed, it is not known whether any are needed 
for them, as in the case of thought and desire. The uses 
of some bodily organs, also, are yet unknown. Some 
have said that the brain secretes thought as the liver 
secretes bile ; but if this could be proved it would not 
establish the materiality of mind, since all secretion 
requires a vital cause or psyche. 

A common opinion defines matter as any thing which 
has extension, and considers mind as unextended sub- 
stance. This definition is faulty, since space has ex- 
tension, although it is neither matter nor mind. If 
we regard spiritual substance as indivisible, although 
extended, there is no difficulty in conceiving it influ- 



98 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

ential throughout its entire bodily form. Even on the 
theory of its non-extension its influence over a fixed 
extent is not inconceivable, since the divine omni- 
presence is conceived to be equally near to all parts of 
the universe although unlimited by space. An indi- 
visible spiritual essence, if finite, may act over a fixed 
extent directly, and be indirectly reciprocal to all be- 
yond its limits. 

8. Ancient opinions on mind and body. Opinions 
respecting the bodily organs which are connected most 
nearly with intellect have greatly varied. Aristotle 
thought that the heart was the seat of the soul, and 
traces of this opinion still linger in the phrases, " He 
has a good heart, 1 ' "a bad heart," as well as in the 
language of the common version of the Bible. Hip- 
pocrates observes that a man is sane whose brain is 
undisturbed, yet elsewhere he places the mind in the 
left ventricle of the heart. Plato recognized three 
faculties in the mind having distinct seats — the concu- 
piscent in the liver, the irascible in the heart, and the 
rational in the brain. In this he was followed by 
Galen, Yesalius, and the early anatomists. Willis 
maintained that there are two souls in man, the one 
rational, the other corporeal, the latter alone being 
given to brutes. Galen taught that the body was con- 



MIND AND BRAIN. 99 

trolled by the animal spirits, which were transmitted 
from the brain by the nerves. Stahl and his followers 
opposed the notion of "animal spirits, maintaining that 
all the functions of the nerves depend directly on the 
soul. Prochaska considered the nervous system to be 
the seat of the soul and the link by which it is united 
to the body. Sir William Hamilton could see no 
reason to believe that any part of the brain or body is 
a sensorium, and taught that the entire organism is a 
sensorium with special organs devoted to special sen- 
sations. The current popular opinion respecting the 
brain is that it is the exclusive seat of volition and sen- 
sation. 

9. Mind incarnate in entire living tissue. A care- 
ful collation of physiological data will prove the pop- 
ular opinion, which locates the mind in the brain, as 
well as the cerebral psychology, which identifies mind 
and brain, to be wholly wrong, and will show that the 
opinion which regards the mind as united with and 
manifested by the entire living tissue of an organism 
is most consistent with scientific truth. 

10. Nerve elements. In the simplest forms of animal 
life, as an amoeba, we find nothing but a mass of bio- 
plasm or living jelly without distinction of organs or 
structure ; yet its movements show that it is susceptible 



100 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

to external influences, or is sensitive, and that it " has 
a will of its own," or " executes movements which can- 
not be explained by reference to any changes in sur- 
rounding circumstances at the time being."* In other 
animals whose structure exhibits the principle of divis- 
ion of labor the nervous system is differentiated from 
other parts of the body, although connected by threads 
of living matter with all other parts. The minute 
structure of nerve matter is every-where the same. 
Wherever found it consists of small masses or vesicles 
of a soft granular material gathered together in knots 
or ganglia, or of very delicate fibers inclosed in tubes 
which during life are filled with transparent albumi- 
nous material. Physiologists agree that the fibers in the 
tubes serve only as conductors, while the cells of the 
ganglia are thought to generate or modify the so-called 
nervous force. Like muscular and glandular structures, 
the nerves retain their special properties for some time 
after somatic death or their removal from the body. 

11. Systems of nerves. The most elementary 
nerve-system consists only of a ganglion or central knot 
into which a few fibers are gathered. 

Thus in the ascidian mollusks we find but one 
ganglion and a few nerve-threads. In the aplysia, or 

* Foster's Text- Book of Physiology. 



MIND AND BRAIN 101 

sea-hare, there are five ganglionic masses. In insects 
and other articulated animals the ganglia are gener- 
ally arranged symmetrically along the axis of the 
body, with nerves and a ganglion to each ring or articu- 
lation, but all united by a double nerve-cord from 
ganglion to ganglion through the entire length 
of the body. If we imagine such a ganglionic cord 
fused into one mass, and inclosed by columns of fibers, 
we have a view of the spinal cord of the higher, or 
vertebrate series, of animals. These latter, however, 
possess other large ganglionic masses — the cerebrum, 
cerebellum, and medulla oblongata — at the upper part 
of the cord. The cerebrum and cerebellum together 
form what is commonly known as brain. Man and 
other vertebrates have also a double chain of ganglia 
along the front and sides of the spinal column, and 
others in the head, connected by nerve-filaments with 
the internal organs, as the stomach, intestine, heart, 
etc., forming what is termed the sympathetic system 
of nerves. This is connected by nerve-fibers witli the 
cerebro-spinal system, as well as with multitudes of 
smaller ganglia scattered through the internal organs 
and other parts of the body. The blood-vessels of the 
body are covered by a net-work from the sympathetic 
system of nerves, called vasomotor nerves, which 



102 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

communicate with the cerebrospinal system at several 
points. From this general description it may be seen 
that the brain is the largest of numerous masses of 
ganglionic or cellular nerve structure, and that the 
next in size is the spinal cord. 

12. Functions of nerves. The functions of the 
nervous system during life are peculiar to it, and can 
with propriety be called neither chemical nor physical. 
They are physiological, or depend upon the influence 
and activity of the vitalizing cause and cease in a 
longer or shorter time after its removal. The nervous 
system acts upon other organs to excite or modify — 
not to originate — the functions which belong to them. 
It also connects, or co-ordinates the functions of differ- 
ent parts and causes them to act in harmony, so that 
stimulus applied to one organ or part of the body may 
excite the activity of another. The capacity of organs 
to respond to a stimulus is called their excitability or 
irritability. Nerve-fibers are organs of communication 
between nerve-centers, or ganglia, and the sensitive, 
muscular, or glandular tissues. These fibers are en- 
dowed with peculiar excitability, so that action at one 
extremity excites their entire length and produces 
effects at the opposite end. The nerves which com- 
municate with the muscular fibers and excite muscular 



MIND AND BRAIN. 103 

contractions are called motor nerves. Those whose 
stimulation excites sensations, and whose fibers may 
be traced to the skin, or organs of sense, are sensory 
nerves. There are also glandular nerves, in connec- 
tion with various glands, whose irritability excites se- 
cretion. 

13. Xerve-f unction simplified. The simplest idea 
of nerve-function may be formed by regarding the 
earliest form of nerve as nothing more than a thin 
strand of living matter, or bioplasm, forming the 
means of vital communication between an external cell 
or mass of bioplasm exposed to accidents, and a mus- 
cular or highly contractile cell or organ buried at 
some distance from the surface of the body. If to 
this idea we add that of a third or intermediary cell 
in which external influences may be modified or irrita- 
bility originate, we arrive at the triple fundamental 
arrangement of a nervous system in its simplest form ; 
namely, a sensitive organ on the surface of the body 
connected by means of -a sensory nerve with the inter- 
nal nerve-cell or ganglion, which is in turn connected 
by means of a motor nerve with a muscular or other 
organ.* 

14. Automatic nerve-actions. Excluding the influ- 

* See Foster's Tliyaiohgy. 



104 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

ence of consciousness and volition, we may consider 
the actions of the nervous system to be either auto- 
matic, reflex, or inhibitory. Automatic actions are 
those which originate independently of external in- 
fluences, although they may be modified by them. 
Thus the heart will beat for some time after removal 
from the body. That of a frog or other cold-blooded 
animal continues to beat for hours, or even days. 
Thus also respiration is kept up by impulses from a 
group of nerve-cells in the medulla oblongata, and the 
peristaltic contractions of the alimentary canal by 
automatic influences from ganglia in the nerve 
plexuses named after Auerbach and Meissner. 

15. Reflex actions. Reflex action of the nervous 
system may be witnessed wherever there is a gang- 
lionic cell in communication with a sensitive and a 
motor organ. The spinal cord and brain exhibit 
many such connections. The act of coughing, when 
the respiratory muscles have been excited involuntarily 
by some irritation of the air-passages, the swallowing 
of food after it has passed into the gullet, winking on 
touching the eyelids, the contraction of the diaphragm 
when cold water is dashed on the face, and many other 
examples, illustrate this form of action, which is some- 
times manifested in a diseased condition as tetanus or 



MIND AND BRAIN 105 

epilepsy. The best examples of reflex action are seen 
in insects. If a wasp is cut in two, both halves live. 
If yon irritate the severed head, it will bite ; if you ir- 
ritate the tail, it will sting. If the head of a centipede 
be cut off while the animal is in motion the body will 
continue to move on by the action of its legs, and a 
decapitated water-beetle swims about with energy and 
rapidity. 

16. Inhibitory actions. The inhibitory action of 
nerves may be illustrated by the heart, which receives 
its nerve-supplies partly from the sympathetic and 
partly from the pneumogastric nerves. Irritation of 
the sympathetic increases its action ; while irritation of 
the pneumogastric diminishes it, and, if carried suffi- 
ciently far, arrests it. It is difficult to conceive that 
nerve-power can have antagonistic effects on a mus- 
cle, as the heart, according as it comes by one fiber 
or another ; yet, as the heart has ganglia in it, one 
nerve-current may divert or oppose another current 
in its passage through a ganglion. 

In addition to automatic, reflex, and inhibitory 
actions of ganglia, we may also name a trophic or nu- 
tritive function which seems to pertain to some ganglia, 
although but obscurely known. Such a ganglion is 
on the posterior root of each spinal nerve. 



106 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

17. Combined actions of nerves. Reflex nerve ac- 
tion is in response to an external stimulus, while auto- 
matic and inhibitory actions are internal in their origin. 
During life the various activities are so combined as 
to make the study of nerve action quite difficult. 

" It has been proved experimentally in the lower 
animals that the encephalic centers exercise a restrain- 
ing or inhibitory influence over the reflex action of the 
cord."* Yet the brain itself has centers of reflex action, 
which is elicited chiefly in direct response to impres- 
sions on the organs of special sense, and manifested in 
complex movements. On the other hand, reflex ac- 
tion may excite the automatic or inhibitory form. 
Thus the inhibitory pneumogastric nerve may be stimu- 
lated and the heart made to stop beating by irritation 
of the sensory nerves of the skin, nostrils, larynx, and 
intestinal canal. Hence the danger of blows on the 
epigastrium and the fatal consequences sometimes fol- 
lowing the shock of a large draught of cold water or 
irritant poison. f 

18. Discrepancies of investigators. The intricate 
anatomy and histology of the nervous system is but 
little known, and there is a great want of harmony 
among the investigators of its functions, so that we 

* Ferrier's Functions of the Brain. t Ibid. 



MIND AND BRAIN 107 

find even positive contradictions among experimenters 
respecting the same parts and by the same methods of 
observation, and the results of experiments npon the 
lower animals have often been at variance with well- 
established clinical and pathological facts. * These 
discrepancies render it difficult to arrive at physio- 
logical truth, and suggest to us a careful examination 
of the evidence, and in some cases a suspension of 
judgment. 

19. Intelligence of headless animals. The most 
difficult problem in physiology is to distinguish between 
purely reflex actions of the nerves which are uncon- 
scious and those of consciousness, sensation, and intelli- 
gence. Pniigger claimed for the spinal cord a sort of 
conscious perceptive power similar to that which 
many physiologists ascribed to the brain. He placed a 
drop of acetic acid on the upper part of the thigh of 
a decapitated frog, and the segments of the corre- 
sponding limb were quickly flexed, so that the foot was 
made to rub the seat of irritation. He then amputated 
the foot of the headless animal before re-applying the 
acetic acid. The maimed animal began to make fresh 
efforts to rub the irritated spot, but was unable to reach 
it now that the foot was removed. After some mo- 

* Ferrier's Functions of the Brain. 



108 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

merits of agitation, as if the brainless creature was. 
seeking a new means of accomplishing its end, the 
limb of the other side was bent till with its foot it suc- 
ceeded in rubbing the irritated region. Lewes declares 
" that the reason why the actions of brainless animals 
are said to be mechanical (reflex and without sensation) 
is solely because theory declares the brain to be the only 
sensorinm. If you pinch a dog's tail he cries out. 
His cry is supposed to indicate a sensation of pain. 
But the physiologist, who would reprove you for hav- 
ing hurt his yelping puppy, quietly assures you that 
his puppy's cries were no evidence of pain after its 
brain had been removed. 'Merely reflex, my dear 
sir ! ' And he w T ould smile at your supposition that an 
animal without any brains could feel any sensation. 
Nay, even when the brainless animal performs com- 
plicated actions to rid itself of some irritating object, 
and exhibits a choice of means for this purpose, men 
find it easier to consider these as ' instinctive,' (what- 
ever that may be) ' reflex,' or the ' effect of habit' than 
simply to acknowledge that the brain is not the sole 
sensorium."* 

20. Adaptative unconscious or reflex action in 
injury. These remarks of Lewes present the argu- 

*Phy$iology of Common Life. 



MIND AND BRAIN 109 

ment against reflex actions in the strongest form. It 
is, however, an established fact that adapted actions, 
such as intelligence would dictate, are capable of being 
called into play in animals and in human beings 
through the influence of the spinal cord or other 
ganglia, yet entirely without consciousness. In cases 
of injury to the cord, or disease in it, there may be 
total loss of conscious sensibility and volitional 
power over the lower limbs, which will nevertheless 
respond by reflex motions to stimuli directly applied 
to them. In the ganglia connected with the functions 
of organic life we find also actions adapted to the pur- 
poses of the organism, but without consciousness, as in 
the reflex contraction of the visceral muscles, for the 
retension or expulson of secretions, in response to the 
stimulation of the appropriate afferent nerves. Move- , 
ments of the viscera may also be produced indirectly 
by stimulation of certain cutaneous surfaces, and irri- 
tations of visceral surfaces may be transferred to the 
muscles of animal life. Many sympathetic phenomena 
of disease may be thus explained. 

Referring to the movements excited by appropriate 
stimulus in the lower limbs when the spinal cord has 
been severed, Dr. Carpenter says : "It is scarcely con- 
ceivable that sensations should be felt and volition 



110 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

exercised through the instrumentality of that portion 
of the spinal cord which remains connected with the 
nerves of the posterior extremities, but which is cut 
off from the brain. For, if it were so, there must be 
two distinct centers of sensation and will in the same 
animal, the attributes of the brain not being affected ; 
and, by dividing the spinal cord into two or more seg- 
ments, we might thus create in the body two or more 
such independent centers in addition to that which still 
holds its proper place within the head. To say that 
two or more distinct centers of sensation and will are 
present in such a case would really be the same as say- 
ing that we have the power of constituting two or 
more distinct egos in one body, which is manifestly ab- 
surd." * This does not follow, however, for a thou- 
sand centers of sensation would not prove a thousand 
egos, but only a thousand places of activity. 

21. Functions of spinal cord. After a thorough 
analysis of the physiological history of the spinal cord, 
Dr. Todd, in the Cyclopedia of Anatomy and Phys- 
iology, comes to these conclusions as to its office : 
" 1. That the spinal cord (or intraspinal mass) in union 
with the brain, is the instrument of sensation and vol- 
untary motion to the trunk and extremities. 2. That 

* Carpenter's Mental Physiology. 



MIND AND BRAIN. Ill 

tlie spinal cord may be the medium for the excitation 
of movements independently of volition or sensation 
in parts supplied by spinal nerves." The experiments 
of more recent observers have confirmed these conclu- 
sions, and have also shown that similar reflex functions 
pertain to other nervous ganglia. In a state of bodily 
integrity the mind may be conscious of the reflex ac- 
tions of the nerves, or it may be unconscious of them. 
Dr. Todd carefully distinguishes between the psychical 
and physical actions of the nervous systems. He 
says that : " The proper function of the brain is to 
generate the nervous force, and that force affects the 
soul and excites its action for the development of men- 
tal phenomena. On the other hand, the action of the 
soul affects the brain, exciting it to the development 
of nervous force, and directing that force for the pro- 
duction or regulation of other corporeal phenomena," 
22. JVerves of the cord. The gray or ganglionic 
portion of the spinal cord is found in its interior, and 
the conducting libers, with accompanying blood-vessels 
and connective tissue, are on the outside. Thirty-one 
pairs of spinal nerves are given off by the cord, each 
by two roots which are regarded respectively as sensi- 
tive and motor. The filaments from these roots unite 
to form the nerve before it leaves the spinal canal. 



112 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

The nerves themselves are distributed to the sensitive 
and mnsenlar portions of the trunk and extremities. 
An afferent or sensitive impulse passing along an affer- 
ent nerve may excite unconscious reflex or automatic 
action, or may produce a psychical change in conscious- 
ness or bring about both results at the same time. 
These facts, when considered in connection with the 
multitude of spinal nerve-iilaments, show how great 
a share the spinal cord has in the psychical phenomena 
of sensation and volition. 

23. Divisions of the brain. The cerebral hemispheres, 
which constitute nine tenths of the mass of the human 
brain, consist of two lobes united to each other by a 
series of white transverse fibers which form about one 
half of the white mass of the hemispheres. The rest 
of the white fibers converge from the periphery to- 
ward masses of gray matter in the basal or central 
part of the brain, called respectively the optic thalami 
and corpora striata. The cerebellum, or hind brain, is 
a laminated mass from which layers of transverse fibers 
sweep across the brain and meet in the middle line of 
its base, forming a kind of bridge, called pons varolii, 
in front of the medulla oblongata or upper part of the 
spinal cord. In the cerebrum and cerebellum the 
ganglionic or gray matter is arranged on the outside, 



MIND AND BRAIN. 113 

but in the medulla and spinal cord the gray matter is 
internal. In the optic thalami and corpora striata the 
gray and white matter are intermixed. Gray matter 
is also found in other ganglionic masses of small extent. 
The brain, therefore, must be regarded as a number 
of ganglia connected by nerve fibers with each other, 
and by means of the columns of the spinal cord with 
the motor and sensory nerves of the trunk and ex- 
tremities. 

24. Speculations on the functions of cerebral ganglia. 
The functions of these ganglia are but little understood, 
and have been a source of perplexity to the physiol- 
ogist. The majority of investigators seem to approach 
the study of this subject with a pre-determination to 
find a material cause for psychical phenomena which 
obscures all their labors. Refiex action is allowed to 
exclude all evidence of spontaneity. Nearly all attrib- 
ute intellection to the activity of the gray matter of 
the convolutions of the brain— an activity which is 
thought to be dependent on the excitation of the sen- 
sory nerves. From the distribution of the fibers Drs. 
Todd and Carpenter consider the optic thalamus to be 
the center of elaboration and transmission upward of 
sensory impressions, and that the corpus striatum is 
called into action in the downward transmission of 



114 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

motor impulses to the opposite side of the body. Luys * 
considers the thalami the place of concentration of 
sensorial impressions, where they may be said to be 
intellectualized, and the corpora striati the conductors 
of motor stimuli from the periphery or place where 
they are materialized. These speculations are based 
on imperfect evidence. Nothnagel's experiments on 
rabbits seem quite opposed to such conclusions. f The 
destruction of the optic thalami produced no obvious 
effect. 

25. Minute anatomy of nerves. The necessity for 
brevity compels the shortest possible outline of brain 
structure and function. Our description, however, 
would be very imperfect did we omit the minute 
anatomy and connections of ganglionic nerve-substance. 
The revelations of the microscope in physiology open 
to us the secrets of organization so thoroughly that 
many ideas based merely upon gross examinations must 
be left in oblivion. The gray matter found in the 
external layer of the foldings of the human brain and 
in the interior of the spinal cord, or in other ganglia, 
when examined microscopically, after successful hard- 
ening and staining, is found to contain multitudes of 

* The Brain and its Functions. 

+ Foster's Text-Book of Physiology. 



MIND AND BRAIN 115 

nerve-cells with prolongations which are considered to 
be the origin of nerve-fibers. They are of variable 
form and size, but of very delicate granular structure. 
Luys calls these nerve-cells " ultimate anatomical units," 
yet w T ith strange inconsistency proceeds to describe 
them as complex structures. He says : " That this 
substance which we call the protoplasm of the cell is 
formed by a true tissue organized in a special manner ; 
that this tissue, consisting of very delicate fibrillse 
interlaced like the wicker-work of an osier-basket, has 
a tendency to agglomerate toward the nucleus of the 
cell, which thus becomes a true point of concentration ; 
that the nucleus itself is not homogeneous ; that it is 
endowed with a special structure radiated in appear- 
ance ; and that, lastly, the nucleolus, considered as the 
final expression of the unity of the nerve-cell, is in its 
turn divisible into secondary filaments." * 

In addition to the nerve-cells and fibers the micro- 
scope reveals in the ganglia a bioplasmic web of ex- 
treme delicacy called the neuroglia, whose closely 
woven meshes form a continuous connective-tissue 
throughout the entire nervous system, uniting all its 
parts. The capillary blood-vessels also are an important 
part of the cortical layer of the brain. They radiate 

* Luys. The Brain and its Functions. 



116 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

in the form of little canals from the deep surface of 
the covering membranes, and plunge like delicate root- 
lets into the midst of the nervous elements, dividing 
into a net-work of great tenuity, but isolated from 
direct contact with the nervous matter by a peculiar 
adventitious sheath which surrounds a part of their 
circumference like a muff.* The influence of the 
blood upon the nutrition of all parts of the body is 
well known. There is also reciprocal influence of the 
circulation upon nervous activity and of nervous ac- 
tivity upon the circulation. " Every one knows how 
fatal chronic lesions of the capillary plexuses are to 
the delicate substance of the cerebral cells, how the 
plastic exudations which proceed from the vessels, the 
fibro-albuminous deposits which become infiltrated into 
the tissue and interstices of the cells become like so 
many foreign bodies hostile to life, and injurious to 
the physiological medinm whence they draw the ele- 
ments of their normal constitution. 

" Every one knows, further, how moral causes — too 
energetic work, which exceeds the amount of the re- 
served nerve-force — prolonged vigils which do not ad- 
mit the recuperation of lost materials, pre-occupations 
concerning a single subject which induce a condition of 

* Luys. The Brain and its Functions. 



MIND AND BRAIN 117 

chronic congestion within certain circumscribed limits, 
are so many morbid modes of excitement which main- 
tain a permanent condition of local erethism, and thus 
indirectly become the causes of those repeated affluxes 
of blood which are so inevitably followed by exuda- 
tions of all kinds and persistent new formations (the 
lesions of general paralysis). Hence that preponderant 
influence which the whole series of moral affections 
exercises upon the genesis of mental maladies." * 

26. Convolutions of the train. The surface of the 
hemispheres of the human brain presents a number of 
folds or convolutions, and among them two deep fissures 
which constitute anatomical boundaries for separate 
portions of the organ. The most conspicuous fissure 
opens from the base, and is called the fissure of Sylvius, 
the other, from the upper part, is the fissure of Rolando. 
There is another fissure posterior to the last called the 
parieto-occipital fissure. These three fissures mark out 
four divisions or lobes in each hemisphere. The hem- 
ispheres may be called generally similar, yet there are 
differences both in the fullness and foldings of the 
convolutions. Although insensitive when sliced 
gradually away, thought and sensibility have been 
generally ascribed to the gray matter of the convolu- 

* Luys. The Brain and its Functions. 



118 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

tions, and the degree of intelligence in men or animals 
lias been attributed to the number and depth of the 
convolutions. 

Lewes considers it unscientific to regard intellectual 
action as a property of the gray matter, and he quotes 
two eminent French writers to show that there is no 
solid basis for such an opinion. M. Baillarger showed 
by an elaborate series of measurements that an in- 
crease of gray matter in the brains of animals was not 
accompanied by increase of intelligence, and M. Dar- 
este has shown that the number and depth of the 
convolutions bear no constant relation to the amount 
of intelligence in animals. Very many facts of mod- 
ern investigation prove that the structure and form of 
the brain are no real index of intellectual power, since 
great diversities in intelligence are compatible with 
great similarity in brain structure, as in the brain of 
the ape compared with that of man, etc. As to the 
convolutions, they are the means of folding or increas- 
ing the area of the gray or ganglionic nerve substance 
with special reference to its excito-motory function, as 
in the complicated folds of the brain of the elephant, 
or the still more intricate convolutions of the whale's 
brain.* The convolutions in these animals are more 

* Calderwood. Relations of Mind and Brain. 



MIND AND BRAIN. 119 

numerous than in the human brain. The excito- 
motory activities of the braiil substance are closely 
connected with the organs of special sense, as might 
be supposed from their contiguity. Thus the constant 
and complicate movements of the eye-ball are provided 
for by six pairs of muscles, but these muscles require 
numerous nerve-conductors with their cerebral ganglia. 
The same principle holds good with respect to the 
other special senses. Ferrier's experiments show, 
however, that the brain centers are not limited to the 
organs of sense, but are also influential over the limbs. 
It is not wonderful, therefore, that the brain substance 
should be the largest nerve mass in the human body. 

27. Phrenology. Respecting the phrenological 
theory of locating separate faculties of the mind in par- 
ticular parts of the brain Lewes says : " The convolu- 
tions of the cerebrum are every-where similar and 
continuous, like so many folds in a piece of velvet. They 
are not separate ; they are not distinct ; they are iden- 
tical. Why, then, can we suppose they are the organs 
of very different functions ? We do not imagine that 
one lobe of the liver, or lobule of the kidneys, plays a 
different part from that of its fellows. Why, then, do 
we imagine that one convolution, or group of convolu- 
tions, can be devoted to reasoning and another to lov- 



120 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

ing, one to the perception of colors and another to an 
instinct?" This ■ pertinent inquiry has never been 
answered, nor can the theories of phrenologists find 
plausibility from the shape of the cerebral structure. 
The divisions of the brain, as indicated by phrenolo- 
gists, have no anatomical basis at all. They do not 
correspond with the convolutions of the surface, while 
the convolutions of the base of the brain, those of the 
contiguous inner faces of the hemispheres, and those 
resting on the tentorium cerebelli are left altogether 
without consideration. 

28. Localization of brain functions. Notwith- 
standing the failure of phrenology, the idea that the 
brain is the essential organ of mind has caused the 
localization of functions to possess a certain charm for 
experimenters. Flourens, Jackson, Hitsig and Ferrier 
have labored zealously in this direction, and have 
pointed out certain motor centers as the result of 
electric stimulation of various parts of the brain. In 
his work on the functions of the brain Ferrier has 
given a summary of his investigations, from which we 
gather that he attributes reflex or excito-motory power 
to the spinal cord, the medulla oblongata, the mesen- 
cephale or middle brain, the cerebellum and the basal 
ganglia, and considers the cerebral hemispheres to be 



MIND AND BRAIN. 121 

the chief centers of inhibition. He has mapped out 
certain regions connected with motion, but has found 
no center for thought. The general accuracy of Fer- 
rier's experiments has been confirmed by many others, 
and the motor zones he has pointed out are guides in 
surgical operations upon the brain. In all the experi- 
ments, however, the animal was chloroformed, and thus 
removed from the sphere of consciousness. In other 
words, psychical actions of an intellectual sort were 
suspended. The influence of electrical stimulation 
upon the brain-centers was shown by movements only, 
and no other phenomena than the physical properties 
of nerve ganglia and fibers were manifested. Calder- 
wood therefore denies the applicability of the terms 
" volitional" and " voluntary" to such actions.* Elec- 
trical stimulation has been applied to the inner parts 
of the brain successively, after removal of slices of the 
gray ganglionic matter, down to the corpus callosum 
uniting the two hemispheres, and even down to the 
ganglion at the base of the brain, and in each case the 
same muscular movements resulted as at first, f The 
presence of the gray matter, therefore, is not essential 
to the movements, provided the conducting fibers can 
be stimulated in some other way, and the facts are 

* Relations of Mind and Brain. t Ibid. 



122 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

capable of explanation by the theory of a diffuse and 
interblended arrangement of the fibers and cells of the 
brain, as held by Robertson and Brown-Sequard. 

29. Summary of results of experiments in locali- 
zation. Dr. Hartshorne, in Reynoldtfs Practice of 
Medicine, sums up the progress of inquiry respecting 
the localization of psycho-motor zones in the gray 
matter of the convolutions, and declares that "notwith- 
standing the amount of evidence in favor of this theory 
of localization it cannot be considered yet as a finally 
established doctrine in physiology. Brown-Sequard 
has brought the weight of his immense experience in 
cerebro-nervous experimentation and morbid anatomy 
to bear against it. Goltz, Scliiff, Munk, Luciani, and 
Tamburini have obtained considerably different experi- 
mental results from Ferrier's. Brown-Sequard's posi- 
tion on the subject affords a remarkable exemplifica- 
tion of the liability of vivisectory experimentation to 
complicate the problems it proceeds to solve. After 
having arrived at quite different results in his 
previous investigations — they and those of other physi- 
ologists have been swept away, with the deduction 
of conclusions like the following : A lesion of one 
side of the brain can produce symptoms either on the 
same or on the other side of the body ; a lesion on 



MIND AND BRAIN 123 

both sides of the brain may cause symptoms limited to 
one side of the body; and most extensive lesions may 
occur in any or all parts of the brain without corre- 
sponding symptoms. Instead of a few restricted cere- 
bral centers governing special functions he believes 
that very numerous brain-cells related to each of such 
functions must be located throughout the hemispheres, 
acting in solid arite by means of intercommunication 
among them." 

30. Psychical functions and instalments distin- 
guished. If we would avoid serious error in our inves- 
tigations we must carefully discriminate between the 
psychical function of sensation and the instrument of 
sensation, and between volition and the bodily struct- 
ure or agencies employed by volition. The want of 
such discrimination is often seen in writers upon phys- 
ical science, as well as in every-day life. A lady asked, 
in all simplicity, while viewing the cells and fibers of 
a nervous ganglion through a microscope, " Are not 
those cells our ideas ? " Strange as the remark was 
it was no further from the truth than those philoso- 
phers who talk of material ideas, and of volition and 
sensation pertaining to mechanism. Darwin's Zoo- 
nomia defines an idea as " a contraction, or motion, 
/or configuration of the fibers which constitute the im- 



124 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

mediate organ of sense" — a definition which evades 
the most fundamental requisite, namely, the mind 
itself. 

31. No special instrument for intellectual facul- 
ties. As the mind, or soul, escapes material investi- 
gation, its intellectual processes of ideation, sensibility, 
and volition must be studied mainly, if not wholly, in 
the realm of consciousness. The nature and arrange- 
ment of the physical organs may exhibit the modes in 
wdiich these functions may be manifested in the phys- 
ical realm, but cannot explain them. The same may be 
said of all vital phenomena whatever. They result 
from the union of soul and Body. The various en- 
dowments of glands, the response of special sense- 
organs to their own appropriate stimuli, the conduc- 
tive and automatic power of the nerves, the contraction 
of muscles, and all other vital endowments, must be 
accepted as ultimate facts, as peculiar to living beings 
as sensibility and will. Even if physiology should 
establish the general truth of phrenology, and be able 
to point out brain-centers for every intellectual faculty, 
the psychical entity would still be a necessary factor 
for the comprehension of the facts. So far as is 
known at present no physical provision has been made 
for the special manifestation of intellectual faculties. 



MIND AND BRAIN. 125 

They are unlike motion, or irritability, or secretion, or 
other physiological activities which imply and require 
a physical structure as well as a psychical cause of 
action. They are simply mental activities the exist- 
ence of which only consciousness can assure us. 

32. Conscious sensation not in the brain. That 
mental power is not specially located in the brain, or 
any other organ, is evident from the phenomena of 
sensation, using that word in its psychological mean- 
ing, and not in its perverted physical sense. The 
reflex response of a ganglionic cell to an external 

stimulus cannot be properly called a sensation, but 

• 

only the phenomena produced by external objects in 
the conscious mind. The testimony of personal con- 
sciousness in the sense of touch places that faculty at 
the point of external contact, wherever it may be. 
The peculiar shadows of the vessels of the retina, called 
Purkinje's figures, produced in a dark room by mov- 
ing a small candle up and down at the outer side of 
one eye, show that the consciousness of vision lies in 
the rods and cones of the retina, at the outer side of 
the vessels, and not in the insensitive fibers of the 
optic nerve. All the analogies of histological struct- 
ure place the sense of taste in the taste-buds of the 
gustatory papilla, the olfactory sense in the modified 



126 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

epithelium of special olfactory regions, and hearing in 
the organ of Corti. 

The cerebral ganglia are essentially connected with 
the organs of special sense, but their influence is mainly 
reflex, and the special form of sensation depends on 
the sense-organ. 

33. Seat of the soul in bioplasm. According to the 
view we advocate, life is not an entity, but a series of 
complicated activities resulting from the union of 
soul and body. The true primary seat of the soul, 
therefore, must be in the living matter — the bioplasm 
of Dr. Beale — as distinguished from the unchanged 
circulating pabulum with its embryonic cells on the 
one hand, and from fully formed or effete structures 
on the other. In the bioplasm the psyche becomes 
incarnate, and from this central unitary structure 
gives origin, form, and direction to all the bodily 
organs, according to the functions of its proper species. 
If we regard the bioplasts as separate cells which origi- 
nated from a single germ we must imagine some con- 
ducting physical material, as serum, to give unity to 
the whole. Microscopical observations indicate, how- 
ever, that the living matter of the cells constitutes a 
net-work whose meshes contain pabulum or other non- 
living matter, and which is continuous from cell to 



MIND AND BRAIN. 127 

cell, by complicated fibers, throughout all the tissues. 
We need, therefore, no longer regard the body as a 
congeries of cells, or made up of " colonies of amoeba," 
but as an individual organism, consisting of a net- 
work of living tissue. This view of minute elemen- 
tary structure is confirmed by the researches of Klein, 
Fleming, Hertwig, and others, who describe the pres- 
ence of a reticulum in elementary cells and nuclei, 
by the fibrilla or reticular structure exhibited by va- 
rious tissues under the microscope, by the peculiar 
movements of the reticular nuclei in the process of 
cell-division, by the appearance and motions of living 
matter in cyclosis (or circulation in vegetable cells), 
and by the evident connection of fibers and cells in 
many tissues, among which may be mentioned the so- 
called prickle-cells of the mucous or living layer of the 
skin, many forms of connective tissue, and muscular 
fiber. 

34. Reticular bioplasm explains experiments. The 
reticular structure of living matter, seen in nervous 
ganglia as well as other tissues,* will aid our inquiries 
respecting mind and brain. While in agreement with 
Ferrier's experiments, it explains the demonstrated 
fact, first shown by Dupuy, that an electrical current 

* Heitzman's Microscopical Morphology. 



128 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

passed through a portion of the cortex extends its in- 
fluence over a wide area of brain substance. It favors 
Brown-Sequard's views of the solidarity of brain 
structure, and renders conceivable how physiological 
influences which usually proceed in direct tracts 
through the brain to influence appropriate organs 
may by disease or injury be diverted into net-works 
more indirect and remote, making collateral connec- 
tions with the organs required. 

35. Mystery of brain a reason for its theoretical 
prominen ce. By means of living tissue, or bioplasm , the 
incarnate mind first produces, and then continues to 
direct, the activities of each structure and organ of the 
body. The production and endowments of the nervous 
system serve to unify or co-ordinate all the vital 
functions, since nutrition and secretion are connected 
with the nerves as well as the conduction of external 
impulses (generally, but improperly, called sensation), 
and the production of muscular contraction. The 
brain is only one of the organs used by the mind, and 
the chief reason for its pre-eminence, in general estima- 
tion, is the mystery with which its difficult study has 
invested it. 

36. Argument from training of idiots. The train- 
ing of idiotic children in public institutions affords 



MIND AND BRAIN. 129 

strong presumption in favor of our views. This 
training is not only of the physical powers, muscle, 
nerve, and brain, but of the mental also, developing 
thought and self-government, making the physical 
tributary to the mental powers. Yet each organ 
receives a special education or drill. Dr. Seguin, in 
his essays on the training of an idiotic hand and eye, 
published in the proceedings of the Association 
of Medical officers of American institutions for idiotic 
and feeble-minded persons, held at Barre, Mass., in 
1880, says : 

" Instead of referring all the initiums to the basilic 
brain, or co-locating it in the triumvirate, brain spinal 
cord and sympathetic, we must recognize the power 
of the million of peripheric brains to give the impulse 
as well as to receive it. 

" If the idiot whose case is represented to you has im- 
proved under the care of his good teacher ; if hundreds 
of others improve in the public institutions (under the 
care of women whose names are never pronounced 
with sufficient respect), the sovereignty of the brain is 
at an end, and the new physiological doctrine of de- 
centralization contains in germ a new doctrine and 
new methods of education." 

" They objected (he says) to an idiotic hand, as they 
9 



130 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

may object to an idiotic eye, on the plea that idiocy is 
the privilege and monopoly of the head. This kephal- 
ism, or csesarism of the cephalic centers, has been in- 
vestigated and found insufficient. The latest physiolo- 
gists have studied the functions of the great sympathetic 
as a regulator of caloric, and its relations to the millions 
of peripheric nerves which form with it, quite inde- 
pendently of the brain, the demo-neurotic apparatus 
of the life of relation. This was the object of the 
last experiments and thoughts of Claude Bernard. 
Our physiological training of idiots may be considered 
as a long series of experiments (from 1830 to 1880) 
tending to the same conclusions." 

37. Common theory of brain hinders truth. The 
theory that the brain is the organ of mind, or espe- 
cially appropriated to intellectual activities, has been so 
often repeated, and is so generally believed, that it is a 
formidable barrier against the reception of a true 
physiological psychology. A multitude of biological 
facts, however, are in direct antagonism to this theory, 
and cannot be explained consistently with it. 

38. Invertebrate animals ivithout real brain. All 
the invertebrate animals are destitute of real brain, 
and some of the lower kind have no nerves. Unless 
we argue, contrary to all observation and analogy, that 



MIND AND BRAIN. 131 

these animals are mere machines, without conscious- 
ness, we must admit that vital and mental powers may 
exist without brain. Ferrier observes " that the exist- 
ence or not of consciousness In others than ourselves 
is entirely a matter of inference or testimony. In the 
lower animals we can only judge from the character of 
the phenomena they manifest and by analogy with 
our own actions." The ganglionic chain of nervous 
matter in those invertebrates which possess nerves, 
'especially in insects, exhibits reflex functions like the 
ganglia of the vertebrates or of man, and the cephalic 
ganglia, as they are called, are connected with the 
organs of special sense, as the eye, etc. ; but there is 
no such massing of ganglionic matter as forms the 
brain of higher animals. " The brain of an ant is a 
mere point which hardly admits of being handled."* 
Yet the actions of the ant give evidence that it is pos- 
sessed with intelligence. It has sensori-motor activity 
in a high degree, like all insects, yet it has personal 
knowledge also, if the character and analogy of the phe- 
nomena entitle us to judge. If we deny intelligence to 
the ant it is hard to see how we can attribute it to our 
fellow-men. It is referred to in the Bible as a model 
of wisdom, and the researches of naturalists have con- 

* Calderwood. Relations of Mind and Brain. 



132 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

firmed the description. " Huber, M tiller, Moggridge, 
Darwin, McCook, Lubbock, and many more, have 
given evidence, extensive and varied, to the high in- 
telligence of ants." * Anatomical examination proves 
that an ant's intelligence is not proportional to its brain. 
Calderwood rightly turns attention from its brain 
structure to its special organs of sensibility, especially 
its antennae, or feelers, although holding with Descar- 
tes and Huxley to the view that animal intelligence is 
a form of sensori-motor activitiy, or automatism. 

39. No brain in amphioxus. The amphioxus 
among fishes is the lowliest vertebrate. It has no 
brain at all, and no organs of vision or of hearing. 
Its spinal cord is also of very remarkable simplicity. 
" It is difficult, " says Professor Goodsir, "to understand, 
according to the received opinions on the subject, how 
a spinal cord destitute of primitive fibers or tubes, and 
composed altogether of isolated cells, arranged in a 
linear direction only toward the middle of the cord, can 
transmit influences in any given direction." Yet the 
account given of it by Mr. Couch states that it " ex- 
hibited signs of great activity," and Mr. Wilde writes 
that when one was " put into a tumbler of water it 
moved round the glass, and, although no eyes were 

* Calderwood. Relations of Mind and Brain. 



MIND AND BRAIN 133 

perceptible, it carefully avoided the finger or any sub- 
stance put in its way, stopping suddenly or turning 
aside from it." 

40. Cases of acephalous children. A number of 
cases of monstrosity are on record which show that 
children may be born without brain or head. In such 
cases the posterior wall of the spinal canal is often de- 
ficient, and the canal is occupied by a reddish, vascular 
pulp. Such children have lived for hours and exhibited 
signs of sensation, or at least of excitability to stimuli.* 
In GoooVs Study of Medicine, vol. 2, p. 147, we have 
an account of a female infant born without brain, 
cerebellum, or medulla oblongata. It was not at all 
under the ordinary size, and notwithstanding its aceph- 
alous condition it lived eleven hours. It breathed, 
cried, and moved its limbs, and its heart and arteries 
pulsated in the usual manner. Of course its intel- 
lectual functions were undetermined, but only theory 
can declare their absence. 

41. Reports of diseased and injured trains. In 
the North American Medico- Chirurg iced Review io? 
January, 1858, the writer reported three cases of chil- 
dren who died suddenly, with no premonitory symp- 
toms whatever, in whom post-mortem examination 

* Cyclopedia of Anatomy and Physiology. Art. " Nervous System." 



134 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

revealed extensive disease of the brain. In one ease 
"the whole cerebral substance was softened, being 
•about of the consistence of melted butter." The same 
number of the journal contains an account of the birth 
of a child with a large hydro-cerebral hernia of the 
brain, yet it " appeared entirely well, nursed heartily, 
looked about as infants do, and manifested all the 
healthy functions of the brain. It lived twenty days." 
Dr. Ellerslie Wallace, of Philadelphia, also reports in 
the same the case of a girl ten years old whose head 
was cut across by a swiftly-revolving circular-saw, mak- 
ing a gap four and one third inches long, descending 
vertically into the cranium one and one eighth inches, 
dividing the longitudinal sinus, and, in Dr. Wallace's 
opinion, the falx cerebri. In despite of the injury, 
and a profuse and exhausting hemorrhage, " her intel- 
lect was unclouded," and she recovered with " mental 
faculties as perfect as ever." 

42. Other reports. Trosseau relates the case of an 
officer who was shot through the head by a bullet 
which traversed the anterior part of the brain, and 
who yet sustained little or no apparent damage bodily 
or mentally.* This case was quoted by Dr. Bateman 
in an essay on Darwinism, read before the Victoria In- 

* Ferrier. Functions of the Brain. 



MIND AND BRAIN. 135 

stitute of London, in 1872, together with one from 
Velpeau, in which the two cranial lobes were replaced 
by a cancerous tumor, and another from M. Peter, in 
which a fall from a horse was followed by such dis- 
organization as reduced the two frontal lobes of the 
brain to a pulp, and in neither was mental, dis- 
turbance manifest, except a remarkable loquacity ; 
which, in Dr. Bateman's judgment, makes against the 
location of the faculty of speech in the fore-brain. 

43. American crow bar case. The case reported 
by Dr. Bigelow in the American Journal of the 
Medical Sciences, July, 1850, has been extensively 
known, and referred to by Ferrier and others, as the 
" American crow-bar case." Through an accident in 
blasting a rock a young man named Gage was hit by 
a bar of iron three feet long and one and one quarter 
inches in diameter. It entered at the left angle of the 
jaw, passed clean through the top of his head in the 
left frontal region, and was picked up at some distance 
covered with " blood and brains." A piece of the 
cranium about the size of the palm of the hand was 
raised up from the forehead like a hinge, to allow the 
egress of the bar. This man was perfectly rational 
after the accident, and speedily recovered with his 
mental and bodily functions unimpaired, except the 



136 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

loss of an eye. He lived more than twelve years 
afterwards and died of epileptic convulsions, in 1861, 
at San Francisco. His skull, preserved in a museum 
in Boston, shows the openings made by the points of 
entrance and exit of the iron bar. Although it is 
said that he was profane and irritable, and finally epi- 
leptic before he died, it does not appear from the evi- 
dence that this condition was the result of the injury, 
or that he ever missed his lost brain substance. 

41. Middle part of brain missing for ten years. 
At the session of the California State Medical Society 
in San Francisco, 1887, Dr. A. Chase exhibited the 
skull of a man who had been tomahawked and scalped 
by the Indians in 1851, and who lived for ten years in 
a mining town where he was regarded as a man of 
considerable intelligence, and showed no bodily or 
mental signs of his injury until three weeks before his 
death, in 1861, when he became paralyzed. He always 
wore his hat pulled close down over his head, and the 
extent of his disease was unknown until the post- 
mortem examination. It was then found that the 
upper part of the skull had a jagged hole in it, about 
four inches long by three inches wide, that nearly the 
entire middle lobe of the cerebrum had rotted away, 
and a decaying fungus mass protruded, within which, 



MIND AND BRAIN 137 

at a depth of two inches, a piece of the skull-bone was 
found the size of a silver dollar. 

45. Case of Dr. Bennett., In Bennetts Pratice 
of Medicine, p. 309, is an account of extensive soften- 
ing of the central portion of the brain, corpora striata, 
and optic thalami. Death occurred from capillary 
apoplexy, which was also present. JNo paralysis or 
contraction existed. 

,46. Another extensive loss of brain. Tanner gives 
an account* of a young man of eighteen who was 
with difficulty persuaded to apply as an out-patient in 
the Hospital St. Louis on account of a purulent dis- 
charge from the ear. Though appearing in excellent 
health, death took place suddenly the next day. At 
the autopsy the petrous bone was found diseased, and 
the cavity of the tympanum filled with pus. All the 
convolutions of the left cerebral hemisphere had be- 
come effaced, while a collection of pus occupied the 
whole of the middle and posterior lobes of the brain. 
This patient had never shown the slightest intellectual 
disturbance, and no symptom indicated the existence 
of cerebral lesion until the pus, bursting into the 
lateral ventricles, caused instant death. 

47. Brain of Hon. Daniel Webster. In a note on 

Tanner's Practice, p. 293. 



138 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

p. 578 of Flint s Practice we read as follows : " The 
case of the eminent statesman, Daniel Webster, fur- 
nished a remarkable example of meningeal hemorrhage 
not followed by any notable cerebral symptoms. At 
the autopsy in this case a layer of fibrin, in the cavity 
of the arachnoid, covered entirely and about equally 
the convexity of the hemispheres, being one quarter 
of an inch in thickness over the upper surface. There 
was no appearance of meningitis, and the brain was 
perfectly healthly. The hemorrhage was attributed 
to an injury of the head received nearly six months 
before his death. Shortly after this injury he ad- 
dressed his fellow-citizens in Faneuil Hall, and there 
were no symptoms denoting any morbid condition 
within the skull. His death was caused by hemor- 
rhage from the stomach and bowels connected with 
cirrhosis of the liver." 

48. Dr. Andrews' summary of cases. In Pennsyl- 
vania Hospital Reports, vol. 1, 1868, T. H. Andrews 
M.D., gives a case of penetrating wound of the skull, 
in which the ball entered the brain, terminating in re- 
covery without disturbance of the intellectual faculties, 
and in connection with the report gives a resume of 
seventy-two similar cases from various published ac- 
counts. None of these are duplicates of those referred 



MIND AND BRAIN. 139 

to above. Analysis of this report shows that eight 
are said to have had extensive loss of brain substance, 
with no intellectual disturbance, two had loss of brain 
substance and but little disturbance of mind, forty- 
eight of the injured had no aberration of mind, and 
ten had some psychic disturbance, epilepsy, etc. The 
meager reports of others leave their amount of mental 
disturbance undetermined. 

49. Experiments on lower animals. Some years 
ago Dr. Dowler, of "New Orleans, experimented with 
alligators, and believed himself able to recognize the 
existence of voluntary motion and sensation after the 
animal employed had been decapitated, pithed, and 
eviscerated. Similar observations have been made by 
others. Redi had a tortoise whose cranial cavity had 
been completely emptied, but which walked about as 
usual and lived five months. Lewes says : " Some 
time ago I removed the brain from a frog and left it 
on a plate to recover from the effects of ether. The 
next morning the servant came to me, with suppressed 
alarm, assuring me my frog would escape. i No, there 
is no danger. It can't escape ; its head is off.' ' But 
I assure you, sir, it's quite lively ; I thought it would 
jump off the table.' On going up stairs I found the 
animal in the middle of the room. Such things are of 



140 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

frequent occurrence. Dr. Innian witnessed it on 
several occasions. He completely emptied the cranial 
cavity of a frog, yet found the animal quite vivacious." 

The writer has seen similar phenomena. During 
one of his lectures on physiology before a class of 
medical students a frog had been chloroformed, its 
heart taken out of the chest and passed round upon a 
plate to exhibit its movements when separate from the 
body. The animal's spinal cord was severed and its 
brain removed, to demonstrate the regular phenomena 
of reflex actions ; but before the close of the lecture 
the mutilated frog leaped from the table and moved 
quite lively about the room. 

50. Cases of hrain injury without mental symptoms 
not to he ignored. We return to the consideration of 
the use of the brain. The cases referred to, and many 
others, show that life, and nutrition, and motion, and 
thought, and will, can be manifested without a brain, 
or while it is seriously diseased. Dr. Carpenter * says 
that u the cerebrum is not that part of the brain which 
ministers to what may be called the ' outer life ' of the 
animal, but is the instrument exclusively of its 4 inner 
life,' — that is, of those psychical operations of which 
the sensations received from the outer world constitute 

* Mental Physiology. 



MIND AND BRAIN. 141 

the mental pabulum." He gives us no proof of this asser- 
tion, and it is evident that such cases as those referred 
to show that injury to the cerebrum, or its absence, does 
not necessarily interfere with the processes either of 
the outer or the inner life. Such cases are too numer- 
ous to be ignored in any really scientific theory of 
brain functions. 

51. Inconsistency of Ferrier. Ferrier says, " That 
the brain is the organ of the mind, and that mental 
operations are possible only in and through the brain, 
is now so thoroughly well established and recognized 
that w r e may without further question start from this 
as an ultimate fact." * Yet with singular inconsist- 
ency he declares in another place, " I might multiply 
instances all demonstrating the same fact, that sudden 
and extensive lacerations may be made in the pre- 
frontal region, and large portions of the brain-substance 
may be lost, without causing impairment of sensation 
or of motion, and, indeed, without very evident dis- 
turbance of any kind, bodily or mental, especially if 
the lesion be unilateral." f 

52. Facts contradict the cerebral psychology. Ordi- 
narily interference with the circulation of blood in 
the brain is accompanied by delirium, a slight pressure 

* Functions of the Brain. t localization of Cerebral Disease. 



142 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

upon the brain will produce apoplectic stupor, and 
embolism (or clotting) of the middle meningeal artery 
leading to softening of the left hemisphere or an 
abscess in that region, is generally associated with a 
derangement of speech called aphasia ; yet Daniel 
Webster could give an oration with a clot of blood 
pressing uniformly upon his brain without exhibiting 
any loss of mental power, while in the case recorded 
by Dr. Tanner, and in Dr. Bigelow's crow-bar case, 
the left hemisphere was greatly damaged, and in other 
cases almost universal softening occurred, with no 
symptoms to indicate mental disturbance. Must we 
close our eyes to such cases, and call them exceptions, 
merely because theory declares the material of brain 
to be necessary to mental operations ? Is the cerebral 
psychology, which identifies mind and nerve-action, 
to be upheld in the face of most evidently contra- 
dictory facts ? 

53. Aphasia a mental condition. The subject of 
aphasia, and the various opinions of prominent neu- 
rologists respecting it, have important relations to 
our theme. 

Aphasia is a mental condition characterized by the 
abolition or abridgment of the function of language 
without difficulty of articulation or general affection 



MIND AND BRAIN. 143 

of the intellect. It may vary in degree from the 
forgetting of a few words to total deprivation of the 
power of expressing ideas. In some eases of incom- 
plete and in nearly all complete cases of aphasia in- 
voluntary words and sentences are ejaculated. 

Most modern text-books on nervous diseases adopt 
the opinion of Broca, announced in 1861, that aphasia 
is a disease in the center of articulate speech, local- 
ized in the third frontal convolution of the left hemi- 
sphere of the brain. Few medical students at the 
present day would imagine that any other opinion 
had been advocated. Yet in the Societe d'Anthro- 
pologie of Paris, in 1861, and in the French Academy 
of Medicine, in 1865, this theory provoked animated 
and prolonged discussion. Trosseau, in 1864, gave 
clinical lectures on aphasia, which he attributed to 
amnesia, or loss of memory. Dr. Robertson, in 1867, 
claimed that the essential lesion was a motor, and not 
a mental one. Brown-Sequard considers it a reflex 
phenomenon. In the French academic discussion 
the leading physicians to the insane, Parchappe, 
Gerise and Baillarger, brought forward many oppos- 
ing cases, and maintained the unity of the mind. 
Fournie, Vulpian and Wilbur may also be named as 
antagonistic to Broca's views. 



144 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

Cases of aphasia have doubtless occurred in con- 
nection with disease of Broca's convolution ; yet on 
the other hand extensive injury and disease of the 
entire cerebrum have occurred without aphasia. 
Trosseau noticed fourteen cases for and eighteen 
against the third convolution view. Since that the 
celebrated " crow-bar case," referred to above, and 
several others, have been reported, which make 
against the theory. Again, cases of aphasia have 
been reported by Gairdner, Killairet and Seguin, 
where the autopsies showed no cerebral lesion. 
Rufz has observed aphasia to supervene on the bite 
of a certain snake, and Brown-Sequard has reported 
more than one case of aphasia due to peripheral 
irritation, without lesion of the brain. 

In the debate of 1861, in the Societe d'Anthro- 
pologie, Gratiolet, one of the greatest of French 
neurologists, presented "a very brilliant argument, 
principally of an anatomical nature. He stated that 
while no positive proofs could be adduced of the non- 
existence of faculties as distinct, independent portions 
of mind, yet the very complex nature of these so- 
called faculties, their mutual connection and depend- 
ence, and the observation of the development of the 
intellect, all tended to show that the mind was a 



MIND AND BRAIN 145 

whole, a soul, manifesting itself in protean ways by 
means of, or through, organs. Phrenologists having 
asserted the affirmative their opponents were labor- 
ing under the disadvantage of having to disprove 
their proposition. If language could be localized 
then the other so-called faculties might as well be, 
and the human mind would take at once a giant 
stride into materialism." 

In the course of his argument he detailed the 
following case from the service of M. Berard. A 
man was wounded in the forehead by the explosion 
of a mine ; on being picked up the patient was ration- 
al and gave an account of the accident. He walked 
to the hospital, and when seen there by Berard he 
had no paralysis, and spoke well. Death took place 
in twenty-five hours, and the autopsy showed both 
the anterior lobes reduced to a jelly and penetrated 
by spicula. Gratiolet closed his argument by saying, 
"I do not hesitate to conclude that all schemes of 
localization hitherto proposed are without foundation. 
These are, doubtless, great efforts — Titanic efforts. 
But when from the top of such a Babel we attempt 
to seize on divine truth the edifice crumbles." * 



* Seguin\s Opera Minora and Journal of. Psychological Medicine. Jan- 
uary, 1868. 
10 



U6 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

54. Study of insanity mast include the whole body. 
If the teachings of cerebral psychology were true, 
and intellect must be regarded as but a form of 
activity in brain substance, the study of mental 
derangements would be very easy, since every form 
of insanity would have its appropriate lesion in the 
brain. Indeed, many of the writers upon insanity 
and mental pathology seem to make this the basis of 
their writings, although they are so greatly deficient 
in proofs of it. Maudsley, among others, may be 
named for the contempt in which he writes of 
theologians and metaphysicians who dare to have a 
philosophy of mind which explains the facts of in- 
sanity in a different manner from his own material- 
ism. He says: "Mind may be defined physiologically 
as a general term denoting the sum total of those 
functions of the brain which are known as thought, 
feeling and will. By disorder of mind is meant 
disorder of those functions." In accordance with 
this he describes insanity " as a chorea or convulsive 
disease of the mind, the derangement being in nerve- 
centers whose functions are not motor, but mental, 
and whose derangements therefore display themselves 
in convulsions, not of the muscles, but of mind." * 

* Maudsley. Responsibility in Mental Disease. . 



MIND AND BRAIN 147 

Yet with an inconsistency which is common to au- 
thors of his class he writes : " To call mind a function 
of the brain may lead to much misapprehension if it 
be thereby supposed that the brain is the only organ 
which is concerned in the function of mind. There 
is not an organ in the body which is not in intimate 
relation with the brain by means of its paths of 
nervous communication, which has not, so to speak, a 
special correspondence with it through internuncial 
fibers, and which does not, therefore, affect more or 
less plainly and specially its function as an organ of 
mind. It is not merely that a palpitating heart may 
cause anxiety and apprehension, or a disordered liver 
gloomy feelings ; but there are good reasons to believe 
that each organ has its specific influence on the con- 
stitution and function of mind — an influence not yet 
to be set forth scientifically, because it is exerted on 
that unconscious mental life which is the basis of all 
that we consciously feel and think. Were the heart 
of one man to be placed in the body of another it 
would probably make no difference in the circulation 
of the blood, but it might make a real difference in 
the temper of his mind. So close is the physiological 
sympathy of parts in the commonwealth of the body 
that it is necessary in the physiological study of mind 



148 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

to regard it as a function of the whole organism, as 
comprehending the whole bodily life." * The last 
quotation sets aside Mandsley's previous definition. 

55. No brain lesion indicative of insanity. No 
part of pathological anatomy has been investigated 
more industriously than the condition of the brain 
and nervous system in insanity, and nothing has pro- 
duced more disappointment to those whose chief mo- 
tive seems to be the finding of a physical basis for 
mind. The early observers found that pathological 
changes in the brain of insane persons were neither 
constant nor exclusive, and that the same lesions ex- 
isted in very opposite conditions, while very many 
autopsies showed no alterations at all. It was very 
easy to assert that their examinations were too gross or 
insufficient ; but the most careful application of the 
refinements of microscopic technology have failed to 
reach any other conclusion. In all forms of melan- 
cholia the brain usually appears perfectly healthy. 
In acute mania there is general nervous irritation, 
which is often associated with physical signs of cere- 
bral congestion, while in chronic insanity we meet 
with results of general atrophy, or want of nutrition 
in the brain, as well as in other parts of the body. 

* Maudsley. Responsibility in Mental Disease, 



MIND AND BRAIN. 149 

In general paralysis of the insane, as might be ex- 
pected in such grave disorder of the excito-motory 
system, disorganization of parts of the brain and 
spinal cord is frequently observed. Pathology, how- 
ever, cannot indicate any special lesion as essential to 
any form of mental derangement. Diseases of the 
heart and lungs, or of the intestinal or reproductive 
organs, are as common accompaniments of intellectual 
disorder as are brain diseases, and are often referred 
to by alienists as causes of insanity. Classifications of 
the various forms of insanity have been proposed by 
eminent authorities upon this basis. Thus we have 
uterine, puerperal, rheumatic, and alcoholic insanity, 
with many others of similar type. All agree, how- 
ever, with Jacobi, that "there is no disease of the 
mind existing as such, but that insanity exists solely 
as the consequence of disease, either functional or 
organic, in some part of the bodily system." The 
closest microscropic scrutiny has failed to identify its 
varieties with alterations of brain structure, although 
cerebral diseases of various sorts may co-exist with 
insanity. 

56. Summary of the argument. We have argued 
that the soul (mind or psyche) is not life, but is the 
proximate cause of all living action. The brain is 



150 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

but one of its organs, and like all other nerve-centers 
has its appropriate excito-motory, or reflex, inhibitory, 
or trophic influence upon those parts with which it is 
in direct connection, especially the organs of special 
sense. The brain lives, or performs its functions, 
however, by means of its connection with elementary 
living matter, or bioplasm, which as a congeries of 
cells (according to some histologists), or more prob- 
ably as a complex net-work, is continuous through 
every nerve-axis and every ganglion, as well as in all 
other organs and tissues of the body. This histo- 
logical structure is more than a physical basis of life. 
It is really alive. It is the place of the psyche's 
primary activity, and in the truest sense the senso- 
rium. In it the primary chemical transformations of 
pabulum and the first organization of matter take 
place. Nerve and muscle structure and endowment 
are but secondary productions, and the microscope 
indicates that the peculiarities of their structure are 
but convenient modes of arrangement of living tissue 
for the division of labor, so that the phrases "con- 
duction of sensibility" and "contraction" exhibit 
only special instances of the generic power of vital 
activity. 

We have seen also that conscious sensation is not 



MIND AND BRAIN. 151 

in the brain, but in the special organ of sense, and 
that experiments in localization of the functions of 
brain exhibit only motory and not intellectual phe- 
nomena. No physical organ of an intellectual fac- 
ulty, or power of the mind, is known to physiology. 
We infer, therefore, that brain structure is not essen- 
tial to intellectual power. This view is rendered 
more certain by the experiments made in training of 
idiots, by the fact that comparative anatomy shows 
many instances of intellect without, or with but 
trifling amount of brain, by acephalous children, by 
numerous cases of extensive disease and injury of 
the brain without mental symptoms, by the occur- 
rence of aphasia without brain lesion, and by the 
want of correspondence between brain lesions and 
mental derangements. The doctrine of the psyche 
incarnate in bioplasm satisfactorily accounts for all 
these facts, and shows that the mind, although 
linked to the body, and using the bodily organs 
for its own purposes, is not dependent upon any 
part, or organ, but is capable of independent action, 
and may 

"Flourish in immortal youth 
Unhurt amid the war of elements, 
The wreck of matter and the crash of worlds." 



152 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 



CHAPTER III. 

The Physiology of Consciousness. 



OUTLINE OF ARGUMENT. 

Consciousness is direct personal knowledge, conditioned by 
the interaction of soul and body. Its most primitive 
form, independent of nerve action, is consciousness of self. 
The next degree is consciousness of the body. After this 
is the knowledge of bodily states, mediated by the gan- 
glionic nerves. Then we have sensation, or touch, smell, 
taste, vision, and hearing. The consciousness of mental 
operations needs no physical organ, nor does the con- 
sciousness of spiritual things, which is the highest func- 
tion of the human mind. 



1. Consciousness important in psychology. The 
biological facts referred to in the preceding chapters 
clearly indicate that consciousness is not the only 
mode of psychical activity, yet it is a power or faculty 
of mind of fundamental importance in the study of 
intellectual phenomena. An analysis of its functions 
will exhibit the range of its capabilities and may be 
expressed by the phrase, the physiology of conscious- 
ness. 



PHYSIOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 153 

2. Consciousness defined. It lias been said that 
consciousness cannot be defined, since it is the root of 
all knowledge, and is so elementary a notion that it 
cannot be resolved into others more simple. Many 
regard it as a faculty or power relating only to the 
affections and operations of the mind itself; but Sir 
William Hamilton has shown that if it knows these 
affections and operations it must know their objects, 
and thus comprehends all the knowledge possible to 
the mind. We may venture, therefore, to define con- 
sciousness as direct personal knowledge, whether re- 
lating to the mind itself or to the objects by which 
the mind is affected. It is direct knowledge, in dis- 
tinction from that which is* inferential or deductive. 
It is personal, in contrast with that communicated by 
testimony. Bowne defines consciousness "as the 
specific feature, or condition, of all mental states ; not, 
indeed, as something apart from, or antecedent to, 
mental states, but as that element which constitutes 
them mental states, It is that element which makes 
an act of knowing knowing, an act of feeling feeling, 
and an act of willing willing. It is not an act of 
knowing, nor an act of feeling, nor an act of willing, 
but the condition of all alike, or that factor without 
which they could not exist. Unconscious knowing and 



154 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

unconscious willing are phrases which defy all inter- 
pretation. It is, indeed, possible that the soul may 
perform many unconscious functions, but they would 
have no mental character."* Yet the soul's functions 
or activities are no less mental because unconscious, 
although knowledge cannot be severed from conscious- 
ness. What the mind knows it is conscious of; what 
it is conscious of it knows. The act of feeling or of 
willing is as much a matter of knowledge or conscious- 
ness as sensation or ideation or memory. 

3. Unity of consciousness. The unity of conscious- 
ness underlies all those psychical phenomena which 
have been classified as " faculties" of the mind. 
They are but modes of conscious mental activitj 7 , 
whether they relate to knowing, feeling, or volition. 
This unity of consciousness causes the subject of such 
phenomena to attribute them to himself as his own 
states. It is not possible for one to have a conscious 
experience which is not known as his own. As 
there can be no feeling or knowing or willing with- 
out a conscious subject the unity of consciousness has 
produced a general conviction of the unity of our 
mental being. Lotze has said that " our belief in the 
soul's unity rests not on our appearing to ourselves 

* Introduction to Psychological Theory. 



PHYSIOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 155 

such a unity, but on our being able to appear to our- 
selves at all. Did we appear to ourselves something 
quite different, nay, did we seem to ourselves to be 
an unconnected plurality, we would from this very 
fact, from the bare possibility of appearing any thing 
to ourselves, deduce the necessary unity of our being. 
What a being appears to itself to be is not the im- 
portant point; if it can appear anyhow to itself, or 
other things to it, it must be capable of unifying 
manifold phenomena in an absolute indivisibility of 
its nature." * The unity of consciousness, however, 
testifies rather to the identity of the soul than to its 
unity. It indicates that the subject of consciousness 
remains the same amid all the manifold and varied 
changes of its conscious states. 

4. Conditions of consciousness. The conditions 
necessary to consciousness may be psychical or physi- 
cal. Inattention and preoccupation of the mind hinder 
or prevent consciousness of contemporaneous phe- 
nomena ; so also in sleep, or a swoon, there may be 
total unconsciousness. The influence of unoxygenated 
blood upon the nervous system, or the presence of 
toxic drugs or the products of decay in the blood, 
sudden shocks to nervous ganglia, and many diseases 

* Microcosmos. 



156 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

either centric or peripheral in their origin, may pro- 
foundly disturb or suspend consciousness. Common 
observation shows that both body and mind continue 
to live notwithstanding an interruption of conscious- 
ness, and unconscious activities may be but slightly 
disturbed. 

5. Interaction of send and body. The interaction 
of soul and body is evident to universal experience. 
Specific forms of consciousness are consequent upon 
certain physical stimuli, and, on the other hand, certain 
mental phenomena produce physical phenomena. 
"Why this is so is an unsolved problem. No physical 
change in vital tissue can produce in it any thing but 
an alteration of its physical condition, and there is an 
absolute incomparability between physical events and 
conscious states. It is not in the nature > of any nerve 
motion or tissue change to cease of its own accord as 
movement or physical change and re-appear as a tone, 
a sweet taste or a bright color. The chasm between 
the physical and the psychical cannot be bridged 
over, so that we are forced to conclude that they are 
distinct realms, yet reciprocally related to each other. 
Mr. Tyndall assures us that " the problem of the con- 
nection of soul and body is as insoluble in its modern 
form (whatever lie means by that phrase), as it was in 



PHYSIOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 157 

the pre-scientific ages. Phosphorus is known to en- 
ter into the composition of the human brain, and a 
trenchant German writer has exclaimed ' Ohne phos- 
phor kein gedanke.' (Without phosphorus, no 
thought). That may or may not be the case, but 
even if we knew it to be the case the knowledge 
would not enlighten our darkness." . . . " Granted that 
a definite thought and a definite molecular action in 
the brain occur simultaneously, we do not possess the 
intellectual organ, nor apparently any rudiment of the 
organ, which would enable us to pass, by a process of 
reasoning, from the one to the other. They appear 
together, but we do not know why. Were our minds 
and senses so expanded, strengthened, and illumined 
as to enable us to see and feel the very molecules of 
the brain ; were we capable of following all their 
motions, all their groupings, all their electric dis- 
charges, if such there be ; and were we as intimately 
acquainted with the corresponding states of thought 
and feeling, we should be as far as ever from the solu- 
tion of the problem, ' How are these physical proc- 
esses connected with the facts of consciousness ? ' 
The chasm between the two classes of phenomena 
would still remain intellectually impassable. Let the 
consciousness of love, for example, be associated with 



158 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

a right-handed spiral motion of the molecules of the 
brain, and the consciousness of hate with a left-handed 
spiral motion. We should then know, when w T e love, 
that the motion is in one direction, and, when we hate, 
that the motion is in the other ; but the ' why % ' 
would remain as unanswerable as before." 

6. Psychological theories. Descartes imagined a 
perpetual miracle of divine assistance producing a 
correspondence between mind and body, as occasion 
served. Leibnitz taught the doctrine of a pre- 
ordained coincidence, or harmony of soul and body, 
like two similar clocks wound up and running to- 
gether. Many of the ancients, and not a few modern 
writers, imagine a sort of plastic medium — a tertium 
quid — partly material and partly spiritual, between 
the soul and body. Others locate the sensitive willing 
soul in the brain, where it receives bodily impressions 
and from whence it exerts a physical influence on the 
body. Some of the latter scarcely allow the captive 
any activity at all, save the privilege of touching its 
dungeon-wall. None of these theories are capable of 
proof, and they must be dismissed as beyond observa- 
tion and unphilosophical. 

7. Mind not always conscious. Some have main- 
tained that the mind is always conscious, although a 



PHYSIOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 159 

swoon from syncope or from an electric shock is by 
no means uncommon, and is always attended with un- 
consciousness. In reply to this objection it is stated 
that dreaming is possible without memory, and even 
wakefulness of mind, as in somnambulism, and that 
the mind is often awake while the senses sleep. 
Those who argue thus regard activity as essential to 
mental life. Unconsciousness, however, is no proof 
of vital incapacity either of soul or body, since many 
activities, mental and physical, are independent of 
consciousness. Many facts prove that the rudiments 
of knowledge may be latent in the mind, without 
consciousnsss, until the occasion arises for their use. 
The greater part of our mental possessions lie beyond 
the sphere of present consciousness, and the mind 
contains elements of knowledge and habits of action 
which are only exhibited to itself or to others in ex- 
traordinary contradictions, as in the delirium of fever, 
madness, or somnambulism. Hamilton shows that 
we have mental impressions of which we are uncon- 
scious, but which manifest their existence to - con- 
sciousness by accumulated effects. A green meadow, 
for instance, is made up of many individual parts of 
which we are unconscious, yet each affects us so as to 
produce an impression, or we could have no idea of 



160 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

the whole. The murmur of the sea is composed of 
myriads of minuter murmurs of which we are un- 
conscious. The impact of external things upon our 
organs of sense must be individually minute, and the 
consciousness is of many impressions taken together. 
Each minute impression affects the mind, but many 
such, as well as the attention of the mind, are requisite 
for consciousness. The association of ideas in mem- 
ory, and acquired habits, as in piano-playing, etc., 
also afford instances of latent impressions and uncon- 
scious activities of the mind. 

8. Veracity of consciousness. Our reliance upon 
consciousness is complete. It is generally admitted 
that its verdict is without appeal. It is our ultimate 
standard or criterion of truth. Leibnitz truly says, 
" If our immediate internal experience could possibly 
deceive us there could no longer be for us any truth 
of fact, nay, nor any truth of reason." The veracity 
of consciousness is absolute and universal. If we 
admit its falsity in one fact to which it testifies we 
cannot maintain the truth of any other fact of con- 
sciousness. In such case no system of philosophy can 
be possible, since the very root of our nature would 
be false. 

9. Distinguish between consciousness of things and 



PHYSIOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 161 

of qualities. We must not confound the conscious- 
ness or knowledge of things which is direct and in- 
tuitive with the consciousness of relations and qual- 
ities which is indirect or composite. The latter re- 
quires verification by reasoning and interpretation, 
and is subject to imperfection in proportion to the 
distance between the mind and the object of its knowl- 
edge, or to the complexity or imperfection of the 
media through which knowledge is obtained. As 
nothing can be more direct and present to the mind 
than the mind itself, the consciousness of its own 
existence and of its own mental operations is the 
most positive of all knowledge. The sense of touch 
affords the most direct knowledge of external objects. 
The senses of sight and hearing, being more indirect 
and complex sources of knowledge, are more liable 
to error through imperfection of the organs, false 
impressions, or wrong interpretation. Consciousness 
of many vital functions occurs only in diseased or 
abnormally excited conditions. 

10. Consciousness of self. The most intuitive, 
simple, and direct consciousness is the consciousness 
of self, which includes three fundamental facts of 
personality — existence, individuality, and identity. It 

is the feeling, knowledge, or intuition that I, individ- 
11 



102 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

ually, exist, notwithstanding the changes or modifica- 
tions to which I am subject. Some have claimed that 
the knowledge of our own existence is obtained by 
the sensation of outward objects. Thus Tennyson 

sang : 

" The baby new to earth and sky, 
What time his tender palm is pressed 
Against the circle of the breast, 
Has never thought that ' this is I.' 

" But as he grows he gathers much, 
And learns the use of ' I ' and ' me,' 
And finds ' I am not what I see, 

And other than the things I touch.'' 

"So rounds he to a separate mind, 
From whence clear memory may begin, 
As through the frame that binds him in 

His isolation grows defined." 

This may be all true so. far as thought-processes, 
" clear memory," or " defined isolation " are concerned ; 
but we cannot conceive of a baby nor any other liv- 
ing thing capable of thought without consciousness 
of self. Self- recognition is a necessary substratum 
without which sensation is impossible. It is conceiv- 
able that we might have a consciousness of existence 
and that we did not always exist — an apprehension, in 
other words, of self and time — if we were wholly in- 
capable of the sensation of outward objects. This 



PHYSIOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 163 

consciousness is independent of nerve structure and 
perhaps of any organized matter. It is inherent in 
the nature of mind from whose intellectual activity 
it is never absent, although it may be obscured or latent 
under some abnormal conditions, as a swoon, etc. 

11. Consciousness of self a fundamental truth. 
The celebrated sentence from which Descartes elab- 
orated his system of mental science, "cogito, ergo sum 
— I think, therefore I am," contains a fallacy. The tes- 
timony of consciousness is lam and I think, or I am 
thinking. It is as plain to me that I exist as that I can 
think. Yet the fallacy has been often repeated. Hume 
made it the basis of his theory that the thinking self, 
or ego, is but a bundle of impressions on the imag- 
ination, and Kant taught from similar premises that 
it cannot be determined whether our existence is that 
of substance or accident. Sir William Hamilton has 
clearly shown that such doubts are refuted by the 
veracity of consciousness which testifies to our per- 
sonal existence, and whose testimony is both clear and 
indisputable. 

12. Primary and secondary consciousness. Some 
have distinguished between the natural and the reflect- 
ive (or primary and secondary) consciousness. The 
first assures us that we are. the latter what we are. 



164 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL, 

Natural consciousness is a spontaneous and universal 
accompaniment of all normal intellectual phenomena, 
but the reflective is the result of persistent and com- 
prehensive attention, and may be ethical, philosophical, 
or abnormal. Lotze thus discriminates between a 
sense of self or natural consciousness and the self- 
consciousness which results from training and reflec- 
tion. "Whether the soul's idea of itself be full or 
scanty, the image which it delineates a likeness or a 
caricature, that makes no difference to the vividness 
and force with which the matter of this image is felt 
as different from all else. The crushed worm writh- 
ing in pain undoubtedly distinguishes its own suffer- 
ing from the rest of the world, though it can under- 
stand neither its own ego nor the nature of the ex- 
ternal world. But the consummate intelligence of 
an angel, did it lack that feeling, would, indeed, be 
capable of keen insight into the hidden essence of the 
soul and of things, and in full light would observe the 
phenomena of its own self-reflection, but it would 
never learn why it should attach any greater value to 
the distinction between itself and the rest of the world 
than to the numerous differences between things in 
general that presented themselves to its notice. Thus 
self-consciousness is to us but as the interpretation of 



PHYSIOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 165 

a sense of self, whose prior and original force is not 
directly increased by the advance of our knowledge ; 
only the fullness and clearness of the representation 
that we make of our own being keeps pace with our 
progress in culture." * 

13. Consciousness of the bodily organism. Almost 
as simple and direct as the consciousness of self or of 
individual existence is corporeal sensitiveness or con- 
sciousness of the bodily organism. This also is inde- 
pendent of the senses and of the nerves. It man- 
ifests itself in animals which have no nerves, as the 
protozoa, and seems to be a constant attribute of an- 
imal life. It is impossible to judge accurately respect- 
ing the consciousness of other organisms besides our- 
selves, and we know that many organic movements 
occur without consciousness, from the influence of an 
organic or vital contractility which responds without 
knowledge to an external stimulus, yet the motions 
of infusoria and other minute organisms impress an 
observer with the idea that they possess conscious sen- 
sation and volition, since they never collide with each 
other in their gyrations and direct their movements 
to certain ends. The most primitive organic sensibility 
we can conceive of, if it be sensibility and not merely 

* Microcosmos. 



166 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

automatic movement, requires mind. By it we know 
that our body is our body. The corporeal structure 
is an object of which the mind takes cognizance. 

14. Corporeal sensitiveness may exist in all living 
beings. Elementary living matter, or bioplasm, hav- 
ing similar properties in the animal and vegetable 
kingdoms, it is impossible to distinguish accurately 
between the two realms. The movements of unicel- 
lular plants and zoospores are similar to those of the 
simpler protozoa, and many phenomena of plant life 
coincide with those generally considered as character- 
istic of animals. What is called the sleep of plants 
is generally attributed to a physical change produced 
in the leaves by the absence of light; yet Balfour 
remarks that if the sensitive plant is kept for a long 
period in darkness it will ultimately expand its leaves, 
and the phenomenon of folding and opening will 
go on at irregular intervals. Darwin has proved that 
Drosera and many other plants digest animal matters 
in the same manner as animals. He has also shown 
that the living tissue in the cells of Drosera and 
Dionoea is quite as sensitive to certain stimulants as 
are the tissues which surround the terminations of the 
nerves in the higher animals, some force or influence 
in the living plant being transmitted as by reflex ac- 



PHYSIOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 167 

tion through the bioplasm of the cellular tissue, inde- 
pendently of the vessels, to distant parts, causing spe- 
cial motion and secretion.* Professor Goodsir (chap. 
i, §§ 53, 56) considers the psyche to be latent in the 
plant, as it is in the embryonic condition of higher 
animals, existing onl} T potentially and not manifested 
in proper psychical acts. The poetical fancy of lin- 
ger (chap, i, § 51) represents the psyche as imprisoned 
in the plant, like the complaining Dryad of Grecian 
mythology. 

15. Embryonic sensitiveness. We are just as un- 
certain of the consciousness of the human embryo as 
we are of that of plants. Professor Ladd, in his 
Physiological Psychology, justly remarks : " We have 
no sufficient means for deciding how far the mental 
life of the human embryo keeps pace with its organic 
evolution. We do not even know beyond doubt that 
the embryo has a mental life in the only tenable meaning 
of the words — that is, a life cff conscious states. But 
it is probable that its antenatal movements are not all 
purely reflex, and neither accompanied nor directed 
by conscious sensation, feeling, and volition. The 
mental life of the embryo, if it exist at all, can hardly 
be more than an irregular and fitful succession of the 

* Darwin's Insect ivoro us Plants. 



168 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

lowest and least complex mental phenomena. Taste, 
smell, hearing, and sight, are, of course, not to be 
thought of as entering into such a mental life. Touch, 
as we understand the word to express the localized 
sensations of pressure which arise through the prac- 
ticed organ of the skin, is scarcely more likely to belong- 
to the human embryo. Obscure feelings arising from 
changes in its relation to the surrounding tissues and 
fluids of the mother or resulting from disturbances in 
its own internal organs and equally obscure feelings 
of innervation as its limbs are moved, must constitute 
the great part of its experiences. As yet there is no 
experience, properly so-called, no perception of things, 
no feeling of self (?), no discrimination of ego and 
state. Yet long before the child is born it possesses 
a wonderfully elaborate nervous mechanism, far sur- 
passing in its grade of evolution the nervous system 
of the most intelligent adult animals. Previous to 
birth this nervous mechanism must also be constantly 
in action in a highly complicated way ; it is engaged 
in supervising the processes of nutrition, and in the 
reflex and automatic activities which are expressed by 
the changes of the child's position within the womb 
of the mother. The mind, however, is as yet unawak- 
ened ; this is not because the nervous mechanism is 



PHYSIOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 169 

not complex and active enough to serve as the phys- 
ical basis of a rich mental development, but because 
the kinds of sensation — visual, tactual, auditory, etc. — 
which start and furnish and direct this development 
have not yet been supplied. The mental life cannot, 
then, be said to have kept pace before birth with the 
evolution of the brain, or with its distinctive activities. 
On the contrary, it is far behind the stage already 
reached by its physical support. It waits to he aroused 
and set to its own work of combining and interpret- 
ing those sensations which are to serve as its chief 
means of early culture." * 

16. Consciousness of physical conditions. Another 
form of consciousness has been termed common sensa- 
tion, or ccensesthesis. It is a consciousness of the phys- 
ical conditions or states of the body, as tonicity, lan- 
guor, hunger, thirst, warmth, cold, etc. This knowledge 
is more indirect than either self -recognition or general 
corporeal sensitiveness. In animals it is a function 
connected with the ganglionic or sympathetic system 
of nerves, whose branches are distributed to the 
involuntary muscular fibers of the blood-vessels, 
the intestines, the kidneys, liver, stomach, heart, etc. 
although connected indirectly with the other nerves 

* Physiological Psychology. 



170 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

of the body by- filaments which serve to unify the 
whole. 

17. Influence of body on mind through the sympa- 
thetic system of nerves. The activity of the ganglionic 
nerves is much less than that of the cerebrospinal 
system, but is more continuous, hence inflammation of 
internal organs is rarely established for hours after the 
action of the exciting cause. The influence of this 
system of nerves, or the bioplasmic net-work represen- 
ted by it, upon the mind itself is of great importance, 
although it may be inexpressible in language. The 
repletion and activity of the blood-vessels stimulate 
the vasa-motor filaments which accompany them and 
heighten those mental manifestations which we asso- 
ciate with cheerfulness and courage. A still higher 
degree of activity may produce an appearance of arro- 
gance, while a relaxed state of the vessels produces a 
depressing effect upon the mind. The exciting or de- 
pressing influence of diseases and of alimentary and 
medicinal substances may be thus accounted for. 
Physical conditions necessarily modify mental manifes- 
tations. The phrenic and solar foci of the sympathetic 
nerve are the media through which the functions of 
digestion and secretion influence the mind. We all 
know how these functions affect the temper. How 



PHYSIOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 171 

peevish, ill-humored, and hypochondriac are dyspep- 
tics ! How dependent is society upon the condition of 
men's stomachs ! On the other hand, this part of the 
nervous system is the medium by which the emotions, 
passions, and higher activities of the mind affect the 
body. Hope and virtue and elevated intellectual and 
moral sentiments lead the vital current gently and 
equally through all the organs of the body and con- 
duce to health and longevity, while melancholy, skep- 
ticism and despair have the directly opposite effect. 

18. Influence of mind on body through the sympa- 
thetic system. The influence of the mind upon the 
body through the medium of the ganglionic nerves is 
quite as evident as the influence of the body upon the 
mind. A child died as if struck by lightning after 
taking the milk of its enraged nurse, and sudden deaths 
or permanent disease among adults are not uncommon 
results of irregular and violent passions. 

The physiology of the sympathetic nervous system 
is yet incomplete. The brilliant discoveries relating to 
the cerebro-spinal nerves and the interest taken in 
purely psychological functions seem to have diverted 
the attention of investigators from this difficult depart- 
ment of study ; yet no subject is more important in 
practical medicine or to the well-being of society. 



172 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

19. Insanity often from derangement of ganglionic 
system. In connection with, the organs supplied by 
the nerves of common sensation, equally with those of 
the cerebro-spinal system, we must seek the causes of 
insanity m its varied forms, since mental manifesta- 
tions of a normal type depend upon the integrity of 
the connection between mind and body as well as the 
health of the physical organs themselves. 

20. Consensual actions. What Dr. Carpenter has 
termed "consensual actions" may originate in the 
sympathetic nerves as well as in those of sensation. 
These are similar to instinctive actions in the lower 
animals, since they tend to a common end and are per- 
formed unvaryingly in response to a stimulus. Among 
these actions, most of which are attended by conscious- 
ness, are vomiting, produced by sight, smell, or taste ; 
sneezing, caused by a dazzling light; involuntary 
laughter, on some sight or sound which is unconnected 
with a ludicrous idea or from tickling ; the spasm of 
hydrophobia, on sight or sound of liquids ; hysteria, 
caused by the sight of another having the same affec- 
tion, etc. 

21. Sensation, or consciousness of objects of sense. 
The consciousness of objects of sense and of their qual- 
ities, which is generally known as sensation, is 



PHYSIOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 173 

more complex than the consciousness of our 
own bodily states. Two things are necessary to 
sensation — a physical impression upon the sensitive 
organs, which are those connected with the cerebro- 
spinal system of nerves, and a perception of this im- 
pression by the mind. 

22. Direct knowledge in sensation. The exact re- 
lations of the phenomena of sensation have been often 
discussed among metaphysicians, some of whose 
systems only admit a mediate knowledge of the 
material world in opposition to the doctrine of direct 
consciousness or an immediate perception of external 
tilings, The idea of a sort of representative emanation 
propagated from the external reality to the brain, 
which was supposed to be the seat of the soul, origina- 
ted, in all probability, from the sentiment that the na- 
ture of mind is so directly opposite and dispropor- 
tioned to matter as to require something analogous to 
itself as a medium of knowledge and influence ; hence 
" the gnostic reasons of the Platonists, the pre-existing 
species of Avicenna and other Arabian Aristotelians, 
the ideas of Descartes, Leibnitz, and Condillac, the 
phenomena of Kant, and the external states of Dr. 
Brown." 

Sir William Hamilton shows that " there is no good 



174 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

ground to suppose that the mind is situate solely in the 
brain or exclusively in any one part of the btfdy. On 
the contrary, the supposition that it is really present 
wherever we are conscious that it acts — in a word, 
the peripatetic aphorism, the soul is all in the whole 
and all in every part — is more philosophical, and con- 
sequently more probable, than any other opinion. 

" Admitting the spirituality of mind, all we know 
of the relation of soul and body is that the former is 
connected with the latter in a way of which we are 
wholly ignorant, and that it holds relations, different 
both in degree and kind, with different parts of the 
organism." Rejecting, therefore, all intermediate 
phantasms or representative ideas in sensation, Hamil- 
ton holds to a direct and immediate perception of the 
external world in immediate relation and contact with 
the organs of sense. Sensation he holds to be " an 
affection neither of the body alone nor of the mind 
alone, but of the composite of which each is a constit- 
uent." * 

23. Epithelial media "between sense objects and 
nerves. Histological researches show that there is no 
direct or immediate contact between the sensory 
nerves and the outer world. Certain modifications of 

* Hamilton'' 's Metaphysics. 



PHYSIOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 175 

the integument or epithelium are found in the organs 
of sense vvhich are influential in producing the peculiar 
form of the sensation* In the sense of touch the sen- 
sitive nerves begin at the periphery or surface of the 
body, with tactile corpuscles, the number of which 
is greatest where there is most sensibility ; yet the 
covering integument is so essential that after its re- 
moval by a blister contact gives rise to a sense of pain 
rather than of touch, The nerves of taste are con nected 
with modified epithelial cells covering gustatory papillae 
of various sorts and connected with flask-like collec- 
tions of cells called taste-buds, where the special sense 
resides. The olfactory nerves begin in definite regions 
of the mucous membrane lining the upper half of the 
nasal fossas, and the termini are long, delicate, spindle- 
shaped cells lying between peculiarly elongated cells of 
epithelium, in some cases carrying a fine hair-like proc- 
ess at the extremity, as if to catch the movement of odor- 
ous vapors and translate them into sensory impressions. 
The complex apparatus of the eye is yet but partially 
understood, and may be destined yet to teach us the 
real nature of light itself as well as the relation of the 
perceiving mind to the external world. The trans- 
parent cornea, lens, humors, and membranes of the 
eye make up an optical apparatus for the purpose of 



176 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

vision, but only one portion of it is really a perceptive 
organ. The optic nerve is expanded within the eye, 
forming the inner layer of the retina; but behind this 
and connected with it is a most wonderful apparatus 
of sensitive rods and cones in which the visual sensa- 
tions originate. 

In the organ of hearing the outer ear, the tympanum, 
the ossicles, the mastoid cells, the eustachian tube, and 
the labyrinth form a complicated and special mechan- 
ism ; but the organ of Corti is the origin of the auditory 
nerves, and the most important factor in that sensation 
wdiich is most intimately connected with speech and 
harmony. This organ consists of several thousand 
delicate parts somewhat analogous to the keys of a 
piano. It is a most complex arrangement of rods, 
hair-cells, and epithelium, and its demonstration re- 
quires skillful manipulation. The minute structure of 
all the sense-organs is delicate and complex in propor- 
tion as they serve the higher functions of mind. 

24. Classification of sensations. Yoltaire repre- 
sents a traveler from Sirius to Saturn asking one of 
the inhabitants, " How many senses have you ? " The 
answ T er was, " Seventy-two, but every day we live we 
lament that we have so few." * If by senses we mean 

*Le\ves. Physiology of Common Life. 



PHYSIOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 1?? 

perceptions of different things or qualities of things, it 
is obvious that our arithmetic cannot compute the 
number. We have myriads of sensations, but for con- 
venience we classify them according to their appro- 
priate organs. Thus sensations of colors and light are 
referred to the eye ; sounds to the ear; odors, savors, 
and contacts to their corresponding physical organs. 
Thus we arrange our knowledge or consciousness of 
external things under the senses of touch, smell, taste, 
sight, and hearing. 

25. Sense of touch. The sense of touch is the most 
rudimentary and simple, and hence the most direct and 
positive. The tactile corpuscles of the peripheral 
nerves with their epidermal coverings receive, in all 
probability, the first impressions of contact ; but by 
reflex nervous action muscular effort is brought into 
requisition so that muscular sensations are blended with 
those appropriate to the tactile organs. Every other 
sense-organ is a more or less sensitive organ of touch. 
In smell, taste, sight, and hearing not only do physical 
stimuli come in contact with the modifications of nerv- 
ous and epithelial tissue, which constitute the essential 
organs, but each organ is susceptible of real tactile sen- 
sations, and each is provided, also, with a muscular ap- 
paratus by which it is moved and rendered subservient 
12 



178 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

to its appropriate sensations. So that Democritus was 
correct when he said that " all the senses are modifica- 
tions of the sense of touch." 

The intensity of touch is measured by the distance 
at which a double impression of extended compass- 
points is recognized. It varies from one thirtieth of 
an inch to three inches. The ends of the fingers and 
tip of the tongue are most sensitive, the middle of the 
extremities, scalp, neck, and trunk least. In some 
monkeys the sense of touch is most obvious in their 
prehensile tails ; in feline races, the paws, lips (includ- 
ing the whiskers), and tongue ; in ruminants, the lips ; 
in the snout of the tapir and trunk of the elephant, and 
in birds, in the under surface of the toes. Perhaps the 
most acute sense of touch is in the wings of bats. Spall- 
anzani experimented with them by suspending threads 
across a room and letting loose some bats whose eyes 
had been destroyed. As the blinded creatures flitted 
about they never came into contact with the threads. 

"We augment the power of touch by motion, and 
are then said to feel ; as well as by force of contact 
and by education. The blind may thus distinguish 
counterfeit coin and colored cloth. Dr. Saunderson, 
the blind lecturer on mathematics at Cambridge, could 
not only judge of medals, but detect counterfeits. 



PHYSIOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 179 

The force of pressure depends upon the resistance 
of the muscles ; hence some have claimed that it should 
be regarded as a sixth sense — a muscular sense or a 
sense of weight. Two pieces of metal similar to sight, 
touch, taste, smell, and hearing may be found to be 
quite different in weight by balancing on the hands. 
This muscular sense is brought into requisition in 
walking, riding, dancing, and gymnastic performances. 
A statue of the finest proportions has to be fastened to 
its pedestal or the wind will blow it down, but a man 
instinctively judges the resistance necessary and main- 
tains the upright position or inclines to the proper 
angle against the wind. The loss of this sense, or its 
derangement from want of power to combine our 
various muscular motions, is seen in the spinal disease 
called locomotor ataxia. 

The sensibility of the skin to external heat is dif- 
fused over the entire surface, but is most developed in 
the lips, cheek, and back of the hands. Yet there is 
nowhere an absolute sense of heat, but only of dif- 
ference in heat. If one hand be placed in cold and 
the other in hot water, and after a few moments both 
be placed in water of medium temperature, the latter 
will feel warm to one hand and cold to the other. 

Browri-Sequard thinks that temperature, pain, touch, 



180 PHYSIOLOGY OF TEE SOUL. 

and tickling, as well as muscular sense of weight, 
have special nerve-conductors. Others suppose the 
differences are specific in the terminal organs. 

The necessity of contact generally limits the sense 
of touch to those objects which are Within our im- 
mediate sphere of activity ; yet it is wonderful how 
much knowledge is gained by means of this sense 
alone. By it we obtain definite ideas of form, size, 
number, configuration, weight, temperature, and hard- 
ness of all palpable objects. 

The education of the sense of touch leads to great im- 
provement of its power. The female silk-throwers of 
Bengal discriminate by touch twenty degrees of fine- 
ness in the unwound cocoons, which they sort ac- 
cordingly, and an East Indian muslin weaver's touch 
enables him to make the finest cambric on a loom in 
which European fingers could scarcely make canvas. 
The blind begin to read by feeling large raised letters, 
but after a time they can distinguish words and sen- 
tences in quite small type. Laura Bridgeman recog- 
nized persons by the touch of their hands. Although 
deaf, dumb, and blind, she learned through touch to 
read, write, sew, and play on the piano. The blind 
Italian sculptor, Gonelli, began that art after he had 
been blind ten years, and developed such genius that 



, PHYSIOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 181 

he was commissioned to make the statues of Pope 
Urban VIIL, and Charles I., of England. M. Buret 
was another blind sculptor. The blind botanist, Jno. 
Gough, arranged and named plants by the touch of 
the fingers and tip of the tongue. Other blind per- 
sons have become good geologists and conchologists. 
Thus the native energy of the human mind displays 
itself in despite of difficulties apparently insurmount- 
able. 

26. Sense of swell. The sense of smell is excited 
by odorous particles in the atmosphere, brought by a 
current of air to vibratile cilia connected with modified 
epithelial cells in certain dark patches of the mucous 
membrane in the upper part of the nasal cavity. The 
chemists of olden time spake of the odorous emana- 
tions of substances as the spiritus rector • a kind of 
volatile soul by which something of the inner nature 
of the substance \vas manifested to the mind by smell. 
Fanciful as this was, odorous particles are so minute 
that the delicate discriminations of smell bring us 
almost to the last atomic analysis. A fragment of 
musk will give off strong odors for years without per- 
ceptible loss of weight, and a little stalk of mignonette, 
or a bunch of violets, will scent the air of a room for 
days. The sense of smell detects the presence of 



182 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

these minute molecules and distinguishes one kind 
from another. The varieties of odors are too nu- 
merous for classification, except in a general way, as 
refreshing, sickening, aromatic, etc., and they are 
usually named from the objects which excite them, as 
the odor of the rose, lilac, peach, apple, cedar, etc. 

27. Sense of taste. The special sense of taste is the 
discrimination of soluble savory substances in contact 
with certain modified epithelial cells in the papillae of 
the tongue, and especially in the so-called taste-buds, 
with their gustatory rod-cells. The necessity of con- 
tact allies this sense with that of feeling, or touch. It 
is also nearly related to smell, since odorous emanations 
of sapid substances generally reach the olfactory organs 
at the same time. The judgment of savors is there- 
fore aided by touch and smell. 

Physiologists generally distinguish four principal 
classes of tastes — sweet, bitter, salt, and sour. The 
after-taste of substances often differs from the original. 
Thus tannin, which is bitter, has a sweetish after-taste. 
This seems analogous to what are called complement- 
ary colors. 

28. Sense of light. Some sort of sense of light 
exists in all organized beings. Plants instinctively 
grow toward it, and the simplest forms of animals, 



PIIYSIOLOGF OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 183 

as the infusoria and polyps, voluntarily seek it. In 
the mantle of cuttle-fishes and in the skin of frogs we 
find certain contractile pigment-cells which move and 
change color in the presence of light. These facts, 
with the location of the dark-colored pigment in the 
eyes of higher animals, and the changes produced in 
it by light, favor the theory that a photo-chemical 
process is connected with the sensation of light. 
Mechanical pressure upon the eyeball in the dark, or 
the passage of a current of electricity through the 
nerves of the tongue or other organs, will also give 
rise to luminous sensations. 

29. Diffuse and distinct vision. Between diffuse 
vision, or simple discrimination between light and 
darkness, and distinct vision, which perceives the form 
and color of images, there is a wide chasm, requiring 
so many special adaptations as to force upon the mind 
the conviction of intelligent design. 

30. Two kinds of eyes. Two different systems or 
forms of apparatus, adapted for distinct vision, are 
found in nature. One kind may be called isolating, 
as seen in the compound eyes of insects and Crustacea. 
In these the expanded optic nerve, or retina, has in 
front of it and perpendicular to it a large number of 
transparent cones, embedded in pigment. In the 



184 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

house-fly there are 4,000 facets forming the extremity 
of the cluster of cones in eacli eye. In the cabbage 
butterfly there are 17,000, and in a dragon-fly 24,000. 
The other kind of eye — the convergent — has an optical 
apparatus for converging rays of light upon specific 
parts of the retina. Such are the eyes of man and of 
higher animals ; yet some of the lower animals are 
furnished with both kinds of eyes. 

31. Minute structure of the hitman eye. Each 
part of the human eye has a delicate minute structure, 
shown by microscopic dissection, which is well adapted 
to the work which it performs. The transparent 
cornea is full of peculiar lymph-spaces for nourish- 
ment, and its covering epithelium is connected with 
an elaborate net-work of nerves which renders it pe- 
culiarly sensitive to touch. 

The crystalline lens is most convex on the posterior 
surface, and is less dense on the exterior than within. 
In this way spherical aberration is reduced in a manner 
inimitable by art. 

The combination of the aqueous crystalline and vit- 
reous lenses neutralizes the irregular' refraction of 
colored rays which always occurs with single lenses, 
and renders the eye practically achromatic. This 
construction of the eye gave the first hint to Euler, 



PHYSIOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 185 

which was afterward executed by Dollond, and by 
means of which the achromatic telescope and micro- 
scope were given to science. 

The most elaborate and most important part of the 
eye is the retina, a very delicate tunic which is often 
regarded as an expanded termination of the optic 
nerve, but which in convergent eyes forms a layer in- 
termediate between the optic nerve and the choroid, 
extending over the posterior part of the eyeball to a 
short distance behind the ciliary processes. The optic 
nerve penetrates the retina a little within and below 
the central axis of the globe. This axis in mau and 
the ape falls exactly upon a yellow elliptic spot, the 
macula lutea, which is the point of exact or most dis- 
tinct vision. For distinct vision of more than one 
point of an object the eye requires to be moved, and 
to accomplish this rapidly it is well supplied with sen- 
sori-motor nerves and with three pairs of straight and 
oblique muscles. 

Thin as the retina is, a careful section shows it to be 
very complex, consisting of delicate epithelial and 
nervous elements with their connecting frame-work. 
The most essential is a layer of complicated cylin- 
drical rods and cones. In the center of the yellow spot, 
or place of accurate vision, the fibers of the optic nerve 



186 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

disappear and all the layers of the retina excepting 
that of the cones become exceedingly thin. 

32. Place of visual sensation. The minute struc- 
ture of the eye proves that we must dismiss the com- 
mon notion that vision is produced by minute images 
on the retina to be viewed by the mind, as that would 
require an additional eye. The lens does form an 
image on the semi-transparent retina ; so it would on 
glass or on paper ; but the action of light in produc- 
ing perception of images is a very different thing. 
The sensation of vision is in the conscious mind, and 
the place of perception is in the rods and cones of the 
retina. If one in a dark room moves a small lighted 
candle up and down close to the outer side of one 
eye he will see what are called Purkinje's figures. 
These are branching red lines on a dark field — the 
shadows of the retinal blood-vessels — and a sort of 
cup-shaped disk, or image of the yellow spot. As the 
candle moves up and down the shadows shift their 
position, showing that the place of perception of the 
images is on the outer side of the vessels, in the rods 
and cones of the retina. 

33. Perfection of the eye. Compared with the best 
telescopes or microscopes, as an optical instrument 
the eye has been called imperfect, but such an opinion 



PHYSIOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 187 

can only proceed from a partial view. For the 
purposes of sight it is far more perfect than the most 
accurate instruments of human art. It has been said 
that the refracting apparatus of the eye is not exactly 
centered, since the visual line from an object deviates 
to the nasal side of the axis. The small size of the 
place of exact vision has also been objected to. Yet 
if the area of distinct vision were larger the mind might 
be confused by the multitude of rays of light falling 
upon it. As the angle of vision is very wide — almost 
180° — we have the advantage of the indistinct impres- 
sion of many objects while looking intently at one, 
and may thus have the attention attracted to any 
thing unusual or dangerous. The point of vision 
can be turned quickly and steadily by the sensori- 
motor, nerves and muscles of the eye in a manner far 
surpassing that of the most perfect human mechan- 
ism. The eye can also be accurately, and at will, or 
automatically, accommodated to vision at different 
distances. This has been shown by Helmholtz to de- 
pend upon the contraction of the ciliary muscle and 
elasticity of the crystalline lens, by which the curva- 
ture of the lens is altered so as to produce a different 
focus in the most rapid and perfect manner. 

34. Sense of distance and of solidity. Impressions 



188 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

of distance and of solidity are produced by the com- 
bined action of the eyes, whereby we look to some 
extent around an object. The images seen in the 
retina of eacli eye appear to blend into each other so 
as to produce an impression of solidity. This has been 
imitated in the stereoscope. The apparent size of an 
object in relation to those about it, or the angle of 
vision, influences the judgment of distance. 

35. Inverted images. That we see objects erect, 
when their images produced by the lenses of the eye 
are inverted on the retina, is an intuitive habit of the 
mind. The mind sees not the retina, which is but the 
place of vision, and which has no means of indicating 
to the mind which of its parts is upper, lower, right, 
or left. Helmholtz says : " Our consciousness is ig- 
norant even of the existence of a retina and of the 
formation of images, and how should it know any 
thing of the position of images formed upon it?" 
The muscular sensations arising from the motion and 
accommodation of the eye are doubtless influential in 
space perception, but these sensations must be inter- 
preted, as all other sensations, by the mind itself. 

36. Sense of hearing. The sense of hearing is 
closely connected with the organs of speech and ex- 
pression through the facial nerve, and with the inter- 



PHYSIOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 189 

nal organs by means of the ganglionic system. It is 
most intimately connected with mind because of lan- 
guage, which is the highest expression of mind through 
the senses. The objects of sight are confined to form 
and color, and relate most to the imagination, but the 
world of time is revealed principally to hearing, the 
simultaneous by harmony and the consecutive by 
rhythm and melody, which has special relation to com- 
prehension and judgment. Of all the senses hearing 
presides over the richest range of feeling ; of all the 
arts music, by its harmonies, can stir up the ocean of 
feeling to its greatest depth.* 

37. Qualities of sounds. We need to distinguish 
various qualities in sounds, as pitch, intensity, quality, 
and direction. In all probability there is a special 
apparatus in each ear for communicating these phys- 
ical distinctions, however difficult may be their isola- 
tion. The three semi- circular canals of the ear have 
been thought, on account of their position, vertical and 
horizontal, to be instrumental in communicating the 
direction of sound ; but some physiologists find that 
injury to these canals produces rotary movements, and 
consider them to influence equilibrium and to co- 
ordinate motion. It is not improbable that they may 

* Feuchtersleben. 



190 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

serve a double function, since the lining membrane of 
the ampullae, or dilated portions of each canal, has its 
epithelium modified into stiff hair-like projections 
which are thrown into vibration by the waves of the 
fluid in the labyrinth. The vestibule of the inner 
ear is considered to be the place where sounds are dis- 
tinguished as to their intensity or quantity, but which 
affords no means of appreciating their quality. The 
vestibular apparatus tells us that sounds are weak or 
loud, but gives us no impression of tone or melody 
or harmony. Here we find collections of powdery 
otoliths, or small columnar crystals of carbonate of 
lime with an organic basis, which may serve to inten- 
sify the vibrations of the fluid in the sac. The cochlea 
is regarded as the musical part of the ear, commu- 
nicating the quality rather than the'quantity or inten- 
sity of sound. It is a spiral coil of three tubes, in one 
of which, the scala media, is a most complicated struct- 
ure, called, after its discoverer, the organ of Corti. Its 
most essential parts are certain fibers or rods arranged 
in two rows, one range leaning against the other like 
rafters on a house. There are about 3,500 outer rods 
and 5,500 inner ones. Connected with these are cer- 
tain hair-cells and other epithelial elements on the 
basilar membrane. Yiewed from above the organ 



PHYSIOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 191 

resembles somewhat the key-board of a piano, and 
its function is regarded also as similar, the rods rep- 
resenting the keys, whose vibration produces musical 
tones. The analogy of their structure with the rods 
and cones of the retina and the transformed epithelial 
cells of other sense-organs indicate that they are the 
most essential part of the auditory apparatus. 

38. Theory of sensation. From the beginning of 
philosophic thought various theories of sensation 
have been proposed, based upon what their authors 
considered to be the laws of nature and the powers 
of the soul. Examination of these theories would be 
cumbrous and unnecessary. It will suffice us to state 
what we deem to be the most accurate views of 
physiological psychology. The minute structure and 
functions of the organs of sense, and the most careful 
psychological reasoning, prove to lis that sensation is 
a form or modification of consciousness resulting 
from some bioplasmic, or vital, change in the epi- 
thelial and nervous elements of the organism, pre- 
sumably in the sense-organs themselves, since we 
have reason to judge that the nervous threads and 
ganglia serve the purposes of sensori-motor activities 
and the unification of all the organs. This vital 
change is usually the consequence of external material 



192 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

influence, although it may be produced by some or- 
ganic change in the body itself, or even by mental 
action alone ; hence the division of sensations into 
objective, organic, and subjective. We have already 
(sec. 5) called the interaction of soul and body inex- 
plicable. That this is so is no disparagement to psy- 
chology. The mysterious world-order in which we 
live reveals not the secret reasons of its activities, but 
only the succession and modes of interaction between 
its various parts, which we call laws. Bowne has 
truly said that "in all interaction, when one thing 
acts upon another, it contributes nothing, but merely 
furnishes the conditions of the other's action or mani- 
festation. Least of all can the cause of an effect be 
laid in only one of the things. Thus, a ray of light 
falls upon ice, upon a mixture of hydrogen and chlo- 
rine, and upon the eye ; in the first place melting re- 
sults ; in the second, explosion, and in the third, a 
sensation. Here the antecedent is the same in all the 
cases ; the difference of the consequents must be at- 
tributed to the nature of the things acted upon ; and 
the effect in each case can be viewed only as a mani- 
festation of the peculiar nature of those things, and 
not as something carried into them. What is thus 
true of all interaction is true of that between the 



PHYSIOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 193 

soul and the world of things." * It is very evident 
that sensations are merely perceptions of our own states, 
or conscious phenomena in us which, although in- 
duced by external stimuli, are not copies of them. 
" The world outside of us is neither still nor resonant, 
neither bright nor dark ; but it is as utterly incom- 
parable to all that as sweetness is, for example, to a 
line." "It is always possible to assume that 'things' 
are actually red or sweet, but that we could of course 
only know this in case they caused motions to act 
upon us ; which motions, to be sure, are neither red 
nor sweet, and yet in the last result cause to originate 
in our soul, as sensations, the same redness and sweet- 
ness which belong as properties to the things. The 
only proof, in the last analysis, consists in this, that 
such objective properties are in themselves inconceiva- 
ble. In what the shining of a light which absolutely 
no one were to see, or the sounding of a tone which 
no one were to hear, could consist, is just as impossi- 
ble to tell as what a toothache, which no one were to 
have, would be. 

"It is therefore involved in the nature of colors, 
tones, smells, etc., that they always have only one 
place and one way where and how they can by any 

* Bowue's Introduction to Psychological Theory. 



194 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE -SOUL. 

possibility exist, namely, the consciousness of a soul, 
and, of course, only at the moment when they a're 
experienced by this soul."* 

39. Errors of sense. If there be a fixed relation 
between sensation, the physical antecedents of sensa- 
tion and the nature of things themselves, such as the 
interaction of things presupposes, how can we speak 
of the errors of sense? To this Lotze replies: "A 
simple impression of sense represents only itself, and 
tells nothing concerning the 'things 'to which it be- 
longs, either as property, state, or action. This further 
interpretation is an affair of the understanding, and it 
is the understanding that is deceived in case it per- 
mits itself to be led astray.''' f The veracity of con- 
sciousness, as we have seen, is absolute. "The senses 
are not treacherous ; they cannot deceive. It is the 
man who is deceived in the judgments which he pro- 
nounces on the evidence which the senses furnish." J 
It is proper for the e} T e to represent the diminishing 
of remote objects, the convergence of parallel lines in 
the distance, the bending of a stick in the water, or 
the spectra, etc., produced by disease. These are not 
deceptions, but the legitimate product of existing 



* Lotze. Outlines of Psychology. t Ibid. 

% Porter. The Human Intellect. 



PHYSIOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 195 

physical conditions. It would be deception if the eye 
presented them otherwise. It is for the judgment, 
influenced by experience and association, to interpret 
the signs which the senses furnish. " The object of 
vision becomes, not what the eye sees, but what the 
mind sees or the eye suggests. The eye can really 
see only different colors and outlines ; but we pass so 
immediately from these to what they suggest that we 
seem to see the thing signified. In actual perception 
what the eye gives is as different from what the mind 
sees as it is in painting or drawing." * 

40. Consciousness of mental activities. 'Next to 
sensation, or the perception of outward objects, we 
consider the mind's consciousness of its own opera- 
tions, or modes of activity, and of the ideas which result 
from these operations. This form of consciousness 
was termed reflection by Mr. Locke, who says, " By 
reflection I would be understood to mean that notice 
which the mind takes of its own operations, and the 
manner of them ; by reason whereof there come to 
be ideas of these operations in the understanding." f 
This consciousness of internal states or conditions of 
mind has generally been admitted as a source of 
knowledge, and various systems of mental philosophy 

* Bowne. f Locke's Essay on the Human, Understanding. 



196 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

have sought materials here. The restriction of men- 
tal science to the study of intellectual energies, ex- 
cluding the composite phenomena of physiology, 
produced the modern reaction of sensational specula- 
tion. True science must accept the testimony of 
consciousness both as to mind and matter. By our 
internal experience we are conscious of the mind 
existing and acting as mind, and not as matter. The 
sphere of consciousness includes psychical ideation, 
affection, memory, and volition. 

41. Ideation. The term ideation was used by Mr. 
James Mill to denote the general faculty of having 
ideas, as the general faculty of having sensations is 
called sensations. He regarded the idea as a copy or 
image of the sensation. Following this example 
Dr. Carpenter, in his Principles of Human Physi- 
ology, introduced the word ideational to express a 
state of consciousness which is excited by a sensation. 
The view which we have given of sensation, however, 
as a form of consciousness resulting from the mental 
perception of a vital change in the organs of sense, 
cannot include all those conscious modifications of the 
mind's activities which are termed ideas. Such ideas 
as are expressed by the words state, government, 
wealth, knowledge, virtue, force, law, life, etc., can- 



PHYSIOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 197 

not be copies or representations of our sensations. 
The mind forms ideas of what is not material, and 
also forms general ideas of things sometimes called 
notions or concepts. It is this power which we have 
termed psychical ideation. 

42. Nature of the concept. The history of philos- 
ophy is tilled with speculations, often the most fan- 
tastic, respecting the nature of the concept and its 
relation to existing objects. According to the Pla- 
tonic philosophy ideas were the patterns according to 
which God created the world, and these only are the 
permanent objects of knowledge. Aristotle distin- 
guished between matter and form and considered the 
latter only to be conceived by the soul. In the Mid- 
dle Ages the controversies between the realists, the 
nominalists, and the conceptualists, turned upon the 
question whether universals (terms or ideas) have a 
separate existence or exist in the mind only. The 
same questions occur in the theories of modern times. 
The German philosopher, Kant, has distinguished 
clearly between general and individual objects of 
knowledge, and his terminology upon this subject is 
important. He shows that the concept (der Begriff) 
is the product of the understanding, as the percept 
(die Vorstellung — des sinnliche Gegenstand) is the 



198 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

product and object of the action of sense. The image 
{das Bild, das Schema) is the work of the fantasy, 
both reproductive and productive. The percept, the 
image, and the schema, or outline-image, are all di- 
rectly apprehended by the mind. The concept is 
mediately apprehended and mediately applied, requir- 
ing, to be used, that it should be imaged in an indi- 
vidual object, or applied to some individual.* "Kant 
and his followers, while they reserve the word idea to 
denote the absolute products of the reason, and intui- 
tion to denote the particular notions which we derive 
from the senses, have applied the word concept 
(Begriff) to notions which are general without being 
absolute. They say they are of three kinds : 1. Pure 
concepts, which borrow nothing from experience ; as 
the notions of cause, time, and space. 2. Empirical 
concepts, which are altogether derived from experi- 
ence, as the notions of color or pleasure. 3. Mixed 
concepts, composed of elements furnished partly by 
experience and partly by the pure understanding." f 
" By Descartes and subsequent philosophers the term 
idea was employed to signify all our mental represen- 
tations, all the notions which the mind frames of 

* Porter. The Human Intellect. f Fleming's Vocabulary. 



PHYSIOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 199 

tilings. And this, in contradistinction to the Platonic, 
may be called the modern use of the word." * 

43. Ideation wholly psychical. It is natural and 
consistent for psychologists of the evolutional school, 
who deny the entity of the soul, to confound sensa- 
tion and ideation ; but they are distinct functions. 
Sensation is knowledge produced by prior changes in 
the sense-organs ; but ideation is quite another thing. 
It is the product of the conscious states of the mind. 
Even Lewes has said, " So little is idea a weakened 
sensation that it is not a sensation at all ; it is totally 
different from sensation." f Ideas may be sensuous, 
or images of sense, or they may be abstract, concrete, 
or absolute ideas, which transcend the powers of 
sense. Sensations are presentative and physical in 
their origin, ideas are representative or conceptual, 
and are only psychical or mental objects. The idea 
of reality, or substance, for example, is wholly psy- 
chological. " The senses do not give it. Not the 
eye, for then it would be a color ; not the ear, for 
then it would be a sound ; not the nose, for then it 
would be an odor; not the touch, for then it would 
be a feeling of pressure or resistance. Nor can any 

* Fleming's Vocabulary. » 

t History of Philosophy. Quoted by Eibot. English Psychology. 



200 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

combination of these sensations represent it. I have 
this or that sensation, or I expect this or that sensa- 
tion, can never be made to mean that this or that real 
thing exists. We cannot identify this idea of reality 
with any groupings or possibilities of sensation. The 
latter phrase defies all construction *until we bring the 
idea of reality into it." *** 

44. Classification of mental phenomena. It has 
been, customary with writers on psychology to classify 
mental phenomena under the faculties of intellect, 
sensibility, and will, and these are further subdivided, 
as the presentative or observing faculty, the represent- 
ative or creative faculty, and the thinking or general- 
izing faculty, etc. But these divisions are simply for 
the purpose of psychological study. 

~No one imagines that the soul is divided into 
separate parts or organs, of which one may be active 
while the others rest. The cerebral psychologists who 
claim that mind is but the metamorphosis of brain or 
nerve-energy, and the associationalist theory of that 
school, which resolves all the operations of the mind 
into the single power of association between its ideas, 
oppose the division into faculties. In strict accuracy, 
all the so-called mental faculties are but specific forms 

* Bowne's Introduction to Psychological TJieory. 



PHYSIOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 201 

of consciousness. The myriads of individual mental 
activities which we term perceptions, ideas, memories, 
imaginings, feelings, and resolves would, however, be 
utterly confusing without some such classification. 
There is no valid objection to the ordinary division of 
thought, feeling, and will, more than to the arrange- 
ment of sense-perceptions under the five senses. It is 
true that there are no separate organs of the soul, and 
that it is wholly present in each of its activities ; yet 
the elements of each class of phenomena are distin- 
guishable in consciousness. We can clearly think of 
the mind as knowing, feeling, or willing. As in the 
sense of taste the senses of smell and touch are closely 
joined although distinguishable, so the conscious states 
of the mind are distinguishable in the unity of the 
mind itself. The threefold division of psychology 
will therefore be likely to remain, and no one will be 
led by it to imagine a threefold division of the mind. 
With regard to the .subdivisions of the faculties, and 
the terminology used to describe them, more reason- 
able objections may be found. Thus, for example, 
the presentative or observing faculty has been termed 
the faculty of experience. Yet the term experience 
applies with just as much accuracy to the consciousness 
of representative ideas, feelings, and volitions as to 



202 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

sense-perceptions. Bowne considers the distinction be- 
tween presentation and representation as not strictly 
accurate if the former be restricted to perception, 
which lie deems to be a complex process involving both 
presentation and representation. 

" The reproduced elements of knowledge are far 
more prominent even in an act of perception than 
the elements directly given in the sensation. In all 
mature perception the mental object is not given in the 
sense, but is suggested by it through the force of asso- 
ciation. So, in the use of spoken or written language, 
the ear hears no meaning and the eye sees none. It 
is the principle of association which connects the two. 
Our mental states, sensational or otherwise, do not lie 
unrelated in the mind, but combine into groups and 
classes according to certain rules, so that they suggest 
or recall one another." * This reproduction of mental 
states by means of association is simply a matter of 
experience, and no theory proposed, either psycholog- 
ical or cerebral, seems sufficient to explain it. It is 
clear that the popular belief that objects of past ex- 
perience are retained in the mind and that they suggest 
one another must be dismissed. " Properly speaking, 
the ' retention ' of states of consciousness, whether of 

*Bovvne's Introduction to Psychological Theory. 



PHYSIOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 203 

ideas or of presentations of sense, is not a faculty or 
power of mind. To ask ' Where is the idea I once 
had, or the object I once saw, between the time of the 
original experience and the time of recall ? ' is to ask 
a question that can have only one answer. Such idea 
or presentation of sense is nowhere, for it does not 
exist in any sense of the word whatever." * The 
mind is not a substance, or extended tablet, on which 
its past is written. The character of the soul is largely 
determined by its past experiences, and it carries that 
past, not as an actual thing, latent or otherwise, but 
only in its power to reproduce the past in conscious- 
ness and to know it as past. This form of reproduction 
is termed memory or recollection. Another form, in 
which elements of experience may be automatically re- 
produced, without regard to their original order, often 
in an aimless, incoherent manner, is termed fantasy. 
When past elements of experience are recalled for con- 
templation, and rationally combined into new forms, 
it is called imagination. 

45. Physical theories of mental action. The advo- 
cates of " psychology without a soul " find in the law 
of association the most plausible support of their views; 
and some who maintain the soul to be distinct from 

* Ladd. Physiological 



204 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

the physical organization admit the bodily organism 
to be the instrument of the mind in representation as 
well as in perception. The older theorists claimed 
that sense-perception depended upon certain vibrations 
or oscillations of the brain and nerves, and that the 
objects thus perceived can be represented, as in memory 
or imagination, whenever these vibrations are repeated. 
The progress of anatomy having distinguished between 
nerve-fibers and nerve-cells, the theory was so far 
changed as to make the brain-cells the registers of ex- 
perience and their renewed activities the cause of rep- 
resentation. A more recent refinement of this spec- 
dilation has been termed " organic phosphorescence of 
the nervous elements," from the analogy of certain 
substances illuminated by the sun's rays which con- 
tinue to shine after the disappearance of the source of 
light, The analogy of a photographic plate, briefly 
exposed to the sun's rays in the camera and left for 
weeks in darkness, having its "latent image " developed 
by means of special re-agents, is thought to lend plaus- 
ibility to the theory of resuscitation of the phenomena 
of the nervous elements. This is further strengthened 
by the experience of after-images left by strong im- 
pressions on the retina. 

" All those who occupy themselves with histology 



PHYSIOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 205 

know that after prolonged work the images seen in 
the focus of the microscope live in the fundus of the 
eye, and that sometimes, after several hours' work, 
shutting one's eye is sufficient to cause them to re-ap- 
pear with great distinctness. It is the same with 
auditory impressions. The auditory nerves preserve 
for a long time the trace of impressions which have 
set them vibrating. After long musical seances, says 
Dr. Moos, of Heidelberg, the sounds persisted for 
fifteen days in one patient, and in another, a professor 
of music, for several hours after each lesson." * 

In like manner the elements of the cerebral sub- 
stance associate together " by the mysterious channels 
of their anastomoses, 1 and without our knowledge pre- 
serve in their minute organism posthumous prolonga- 
tions of past impressions. They act simultaneously to 
produce the phenomena of memory, and separately give 
off reminiscences, as illuminated bodies give off the 
luminous waves they have stored up in their sub- 
stance." f 

These and similar analogies are not without force in 
endeavoring to account for unconscious automatism, 
and may be considered applicable in that connection, 
but are far from explaining a representation in con- 

* Luys. The Brain and its Functions. t Ibid. 



206 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

sciousness either of memory or imagination. Excita- 
tion of the sense-organs does not become sensation 
until the attention of the mind renders it conscious. 
In like manner re-excitation would be but a recurrence 
of the same experience. The feebler excitation or 
" phosphorescence " of the same nerve-elements ought 
to appear as a faint perception and not as a reproduc- 
tion of former experience. Such theories make no 
provision for recognition or memory. If the brain- 
registry be true in any form the ideas supposed to be 
shown by it are just as external to memory as external 
objects are to perception. 

The cell-theory of memory is not without gr 4 ave 
physiological difficulties. Bowne shows that its asser- 
tion of specific nerve-energy is opposed to all the in- 
dications of physiological research ; its assumption of 
specific nerve-cells for sense experience is very doubt- 
ful, while the assumption of such cells for every 
element of thought and feeling is an hypothesis to 
prove an hypothesis. The assumption of special lines 
of nervous connection among cells is a second hypoth- 
esis brought in to support the first, while the complex- 
ity of the theory makes demands upon the brain which 
there is no reason for believing that it can fulfill. 

In the chapter on Mind and Brain we have shown 



PHYSIOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 207 

that the mass of brain-structure serves sensori-motor 
functions, and may be greatly injured or diseased with- 
out mental disturbance of any kind, so that the opinion 
that the brain- is the organ of mind is a popular fallacy. 
46. Ohjectional methods of cerebralists. It is not 
without reason that the upholders of a rational dualism 
object to the method pursued by materialistic writers. 
" The cerebralist talks, like every other man, of per- 
ceiving, of being conscious, of remembering, of induc- 
tion, and of reasoning. He proposes, as problems to 
be explained, these phenomena as dependent on and 
connected with one another in the experience of human 
consciousness. Of these facts of consciousness he con- 
tinually avails himself to give meaning and significance 
to his cerebral analysis. In short, he supposes a 
science of the mind's inner experiences which he pro- 
poses to supplement by facts or laws of sense-observa- 
tion, using the facts to be explained to interpret the 
facts which explain them. Should he attempt to use the 
nomenclature of his own science in place of that given 
by the science founded on consciousness he would fail 
to be understood. The one cannot be a substitute or 
an equivalent for the other. A science supposes a 
knowing agent, and a knowing agent is something 
other than a throbbing brain ; and to know even the 



208 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

functions of the brain, especially after a scientific 
method, must surely be something more than for the 
brain to exercise a function in respect to itself and its 
own functions. Such a conception is more incredible 
and inconceivable than the conception, so often stig- 
matized, of the soul as conscious of its own oper- 
ations." * 

" The application of uncouth terms derived from the 
physical sciences, such as ' agglutination,' ' agglomer- 
ation,' 'cohesion,' ' organic phosphorescence,' 'histolog- 
ical catalepsy,' etc., has simply the effect of repeat- 
ing certain psychical facts and laws in a less appropriate 
way without adding an item of information regarding 
the real nature of their physiological basis." f 

Still worse is it when popular writers, under the 
guise of science, draw upon their imaginations for 
scientific facts or apply analogies which are utterly un- 
proved. The positive facts revealed by consciousness 
are far more scientific and enduring than the theories 
of vibrating nerves which have never been seen vibrat- 
ing, or conducting lines of nervous communication 
which have never been proved, or registration in 
nerve-cells which exist only in fancy. Yet the rep- 
etition of such theories, with a rhetorical pretension to 

* Porter. The Human Intellect. + Ladd. Physiological Psychology. 



PHYSIOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 209 

science, is all the materialistic school has yet been able 
to present as a foundation for the doctrine of a phys- 
ical basis of mental activities. 

47. Memory not physical, hut mental. The mind's 
power to remember is a spiritual activity which must 
be regarded as an ultimate fact, for which there is 
neither analogy nor explanation. It is very far from 
exhibiting the characteristics of a record, or register, 
either physical or mental ; much less can it be called 
an echo or shadow of former perceptions. All the 
faculties of the mind lend their share to the repro- 
duction of the past experience in consciousness and 
its recognition as past. Lotze has shown us that the 
images given to the consciousness in memory are by 
no means the same as the images of sense. " If we 
see the figure of some one approaching, every step 
nearer he comes, the image on our retina assumes 
larger dimensions ; hardly one point of the whole 
figure answers at any one moment to the same spot 
of the eye as at the moment before ; not one after- 
image, but numberless images, all different one from 
another, would remain, if our nervous organs really 
fixed every momentary impression in permanent 
traces. We have assumed that these figures are in- 
variable in their outlines. But we see the same per- 
14 



210 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

son perhaps in a thousand different attitudes and 
motions of the limbs. Which one of the numberless 
images that he has cast on our eye will the brain re- 
tain ? Or are we to suppose that they are all retained '? 
If we should perchance make up our minds to this, at 
what price should we have, after all, purchased this 
corporeal fixing of impressions ? At no less a price 
than the admission that, seeing the smallness of the 
brain does not allow us to assume that each of these 
countless images has a special particle in which it 
inheres, each several simple atom must be capable of 
containing in itself, without any mutual disturbance, 
an infinite number of different impressions. Such a 
theory would contain many repetitions of the same 
supposition that we make once. If every several 
atom of the cerebral mass is capable of retaining 
without confusion numberless impressions, why should 
the soul alone, like the atom a simple being, be in- 
capable of doing so? Why should it alone not pos- 
sess the faculty of memory and recollection in itself, 
without the aid of a corporeal organ, when we have 
to concede that faculty directly and without the medi- 
ation of a new instrument to every part of the as- 
sumed organ? Nay? we must in fact make the 
contrary assertion that the retention and reproduction 



PHYSIOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 211 

of impressions are possible, not to a number of co- 
operant cerebral particles, but exclusively to the soul's 
undivided unity. For even the images of sense- 
perceptions preserved in memory are not in the strict 
sense images, not likenesses unvarying in their size 
and the number and position of their parts ; on the 
contrary, the soul retains only the general outline, the 
design, the idea of the internal connection of many 
marks, and thence, at the several moments of recollec- 
tion, educes the particular images ; nor does it -always 
bring back the image of a position, attitude, or move- 
ment of the figure, which on a previous occasion it 
perceived, but, anticipating experience, it beholds 
familiar figures with their outlines distorted in a way 
that never has been actually witnessed. But this 
retention, not so much of the various constituents 
themselves as of the rule of their composition, is an 
action of relating knowledge, an operation of the 
soul ; to admit an organ of memory would only lead 
to our having to attribute a memory to the soul, and 
also to regard the several atoms of the brain as souls 
whose power of remembrance assists ours." * 

48. Imagination. The production of voluntary 
mental images is termed imagination, which in its 

* Microcosmos. 



212 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

highest degree rises to a kind of creative, or poetic, 
power. So potent is this activity that it mingles with 
all other mental operations and interferes with their 
effects. It often modifies the perceptions, may render 
the memory untrustworthy, and mislead the reason in 
its acts of comparison and judgment. It may even 
encroach upon the sphere of the religious nature, 
imitating the office of conscience, or moral suscepti- 
bility, and lead to self-deception. When directed by 
a wise and proper volition it produces the highest and 
noblest intellectual effects, as seen in the works of 
poets and philosophers. The inferior animals have 
memory and automatic fantasy, since they evidently 
dream, and in this state there is reproduction and 
combination of the perceptions of their waking hours ; 
but they show no trace of that power of imagination 
which not only consciously creates new objects by 
combining the elements of things seen and temporal, 
but also transcends the sphere of sense, gathers ideas 
from the nature of the soul itself, and gives us 
thoughts which are based on things unseen and eternal. 
49. JSFo physical organ of reason. The conscious- 
ness of the process of reasoning, or the mental opera- 
tions of comparison and judgment, depending upon 
observed or known relations between the objects of 



PHYSIOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 213 

thought, as likeness and unlikeness, cause and effect, 
reality and appearance, time, space, and number, is 
wholly psychical. It is not necessary here to refer to 
the philosophical discussions as to the origin of our 
knowledge of these relations. It is sufficient to insist, 
with Bowne, that the existence of these relations is 
not the same as a knowledge of these relations. That 
must inhere in a conscious subject, or mind. As to a 
physical basis for the power of the mind to form gen- 
eralized concepts, to discover laws, and to reason 
about its own nature and the phenomena of its own 
activities, it is a matter wholly inconceivable. Lotze 
has well said, "For all the higher spiritual faculties, 
which consist in judgment of the relations of given 
conceptions, we neither know how empirically to 
demonstrate a definite bodily organ, nor should w T e 
know how to conceive precisely what, that is of any 
use, such an organ could contribute toward the solu- 
tion of the most essential part of the problem — that 
is, the pronouncing of the judgment itself. 1 ' 

50. Consciousness of feelings. Intimately asso- 
ciated with intellectual processes, because of the 
mind's unity, are those forms of consciousness 
termed sensibility and will. The latter will be con- 
sidered in the chapter on Automatism and Freedom. 



214 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

Sensibility or sensitivity has been used as a general 
term to denote the capacity of feeling, including sen- 
sations and internal emotions, whether derived from 
outward and material objects or from relations, ideas, 
desires, affections, or passions. It is used also to in- 
clude the sentiments, sesthetical, moral, and religious — 
in short, every modification of feeling of which man 
is susceptible. We apply the term feelings exclusively 
to states of pleasure and pain, in contrast with sensa- 
tions as indifferent perceptions. Thus we have feel- 
ings of sense, depending on sense-stimuli, aesthetic 
feelings, and ethical feelings. A state of feeling 
which is attended with disorder in the train of ideas 
and nervous action is called affection, or emotion. 
The feelings are called passions when, by excitements 
repeated and combined with emotions, they persevere 
in a direction toward a special object to such an ex- 
tent that the subject suffers by it. It seems self- 
evident that these forms of sensibility can only be 
experienced in the mental consciousness. 

51. Consciousness of spiritual objects. In addition 
to the consciousness of body and mind, with their 
states, modifications, or activities, we find the con- 
sciousness of principles and of agencies which are 
spiritual or divine. This power of human nature may 



PHYSIOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 215 

be called spiritual consciousness. The origin of this 
power will be considered hereafter ; at present we are 
concerned only with the fact of its existence. 

Plato divided the faculties of the mind into sensa- 
tion (alodrjmg), discursive reason (Aoyoc), and intuitive 
reason (yovg). Kant also distinguished between the 
understanding ( Verstand), or intellect, and the intui- 
tional faculty, or reason ( Vernunft). According to 
bis philosophy the sphere of the understanding is co- 
incident with the sensible world and cannot transcend 
it, but the reason ascends to the supersensuous. The 
understanding deals with conceptions, the reason with 
ideas. The knowledge obtained by the understanding 
is particular and contingent ; the product of the reason 
is necessary and universal knowledge or truth. Cole- 
ridge adopted these views and extended a knowledge 
of them by his writings. These classifications, how- 
ever, make no distinction between the mind occupied 
with the ideas of its own inner world and its knowl- 
edge of spiritual agencies, principles, and relations 
which are external to itself. The physiological plan 
which we pursue removes the obscurity usually at- 
tached to this part of the subject, and formulates the 
spiritual consciousness clearly as the highest function 
of the mind. 



216 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

The psychical consciousness of spiritual truth and 
beauty, of spiritual and divine influences, is generally 
considered to be the result of the possession of a 
nature still higher than the psyche — the pneuma, or 
spirit, of the biblical psychology. The mathematical 
relations, the philosophy, and the poetry of the world 
express the highest range of our psychical powers in 
their own sphere, while religion and personal experi- 
ence furnish conclusive evidence of a knowledge, or 
consciousness, wmich transcends all worldly and psy- 
chical things. The objects of this consciousness may 
not be realized in every mind, since consciousness 
may be latent in any of its spheres of action ; yet the 
power is in every man, and when the conditions are 
fulfilled the experience necessarily results. 

Professor Max Muller, in his Introduction to the 
Science of Religion, says, " As there is a faculty of 
speech, independent of all the historical forms of 
language, so there is a faculty of faith independent of 
all historical religions." This faith-faculty he con- 
siders to be the. same as the intuitional faculty ( Ver- 
nunft) of Kant, and desires that it be guarded by 
careful definition. In his opinion it is quite different 
from intellectual or hypothetical belief, since he states 
that " no simply historical fact can ever fall under the 



PHYSIOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 217 

cognizance of faith." * Herbert Spencer also has 
declared that " religion every-where present as a weft 
running through the warp of human history ex- 
presses some eternal fact." f This " eternal fact " of 
Spencer, or "faith-faculty" of Max Muller, we find 
in man's spiritual consciousness, quickening all the 
psychical powers, giving knowledge of God and of 
our relations to him, a sense of moral obligation, 
aspirations after virtue, and inexpressible yearnings 
after a higher life in the invisible world. This spir- 
itual consciousness, which gives knowledge of divine 
realities — a knowledge undisturbed by intellectual 
criticism, ministers to our sense of spiritual truth and 
beauty. It takes cognizance of spiritual realities, and 
affords us a scientific basis for the hope of immortal- 
ity, since that which can commune with spiritual 
things must itself be spiritual in the highest sense of 
that word. 

52. Man's highest sphere. The brief outline we 
have sketched of the physiology of human conscious- 
ness, and its reliability in proportion to its directness, 
suggests the nature of man's highest culture. We 
may welcome all physical science and rejoice in the 
breadth of vision to which we have attained respect- 

* Page 153. + First Principles. Chap. 1, p. 20. 



218 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

ing the physical universe, and we need not under- 
value the philosophy of the mind itself, while we also 
seek for truth as revealed in the higher regions of 
our nature and delight in a consciousness which soars 
above all sensuous and psychical objects and brings us 
into communion with spiritual things. This con- 
sciousness makes this wonderful world in which we 
live to be permeated with spiritual life. By it we 
recognize the transcendence of the Creator above the 
creation, as well as his immanence in all mental and 
physical things. This makes the universe to glow 
with a beauty which is far more than utility, so that 
we may each realize with Wordsworth, 

"A presence that disturbs me with the joy 
Of elevated thoughts: a sense sublime 
Of something far more deeply interfused, 
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
And the round ocean, and the living air — " 

a sense of the supernal beauty in whose image our 
spirits were made, and toward which they strive in a 
thousand mistaken longings, as well as in the more 
positive consciousness of truth. 



AUTOMATISM AND FREEDOM. 219 



CHAPTER IV. 

Automatism and Freedom. 



OUTLINE OF ARGUMENT. 
The bodj' is an imperfect vehicle of the soul, and automatism 
is a necessary result of organization; hence we have un- 
conscious automatism of the bodily activities and of men- 
tal states, most manifest in pathological conditions, as 
epilepsy, trance, or insanity. We have also conscious or 
semi-conscious automatism in reverie, sleep, somnambu- 
lism, etc. These automatic acts are irresponsible. Voli- 
tion is also a true psychical power, and is witnessed in the 
lower animals as w r ell as in man. Volition is limited to 
its own sphere, yet may greatly influence automatism. 
Hence the importance of educating the will. 



1. Definitions. If a piece of mechanism is so con- 
structed as to imitate the actions of a living animal it 
is called an automaton. About 400 years B. C. 
Archytas of Tarentum made an artificial dove that 
could fly, and in the last century Vaucanson exhibited 
a mechanical flute-player in Paris, which had the form 
of a man, and performed with its fingers. A still more 
wonderful automaton was the famous chess-player of 
Kempelen (or Dalziel), which was able to beat most 



220 PHYSIOLOGY OF .THE SOUL. 

of the players who tested it. Sir David Brewster 
showed that the supposed skill of the automaton could 
be explained by the presence of a living man artfully 
concealed in the machine. 

Webster tells us that automatism is the power of 
self-movement, and that the ternrautomaton is applied 
to any thing which has the power of spontaneous 
movement ; yet this definition may include volitional 
or non-volitional activities. We use the word auto- 
matic to express the movement of machinery which 
produces involuntary results similar to those pro- 
duced by the human hand, as the automatic feed of a 
lathe, or an automatic dividing- engine, and movements 
in a living body which are involuntary, as winking of 
the eyelids on the approach of a finger, are also called 
automatic. As no machine has self-motion, but 
moves by means of some applied external force, 
it seems strange that the word automaton, derived 
from the Greek words which signify self-motion, 
should be applied to machines. 

In the present chapter we shall use the term autom- 
atism and its correlatives to express all activities 
which originate without conscious volition. As voli- 
tion expresses the mind's power to will, or choose, 
without controlling restraint, we shall use the words 



AUTOMATISM AND FREEDOM. 221 

automatism and volition as directly opposed to each 
other. That which is automatic is mechanical and 
not free. Volition is the expression of the free person- 
ality. 

2. Relations of automatism and volition. The 
subjects of mechanical automatism and free-will have 
largely occupied the attention of thinkers. The his- 
tory of philosophy shows but two opinions concerning 
the nature and government of the universe and of man. 
Under one of these we must classify ourselves if we 
think at all. One regards the entire cosmos — the uni- 
verse without us and the human microcosm also — as 
entirely mechanical. It is an elaborate piece of 
machinery, self-acting, and manifesting forces which, 
however transformed, are eternally the same. The 
other view regards the universe and the human organ- 
ism as constituted by dual and differing substances, 
material and spiritual, and grants to the latter the power 
of originating action and change. To one class of think- 
ers man's constitution is but a beautiful machine, and 
the will is like the centrifugal governor of an engine, 
acted upon by balancing forces, and forced to move 
in accordance with its surroundings. To the other 
human nature is no less beautiful and exact in the con- 
struction of its material mechanism ; but the will is 



222 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

regarded as a function of the engineer who directs the 
engine with intelligent design. It will be our aim to 
consider the actual facts of human nature, particularly 
those of physiology and pathology, in order to dis- 
criminate rationally between mechanism and freedom. 
We can only glance at an outline of this subject, 
which in its application reaches not only to physical 
life and all nervous affections, but also to philosophy, 
jurisprudence, and theology. The limits of personal 
accountability and of sanity must be sought here, as 
well as an explanation of the vagaries of cranks and 
the fancies of an unregulated imagination. 

3. Body an imperfect vehicle of the soul. Many 
reasons have been given in previous chapters to estab- 
lish the opinion that the psyche or spiritual nature is 
manifested through the living tissue, or bioplasm, of 
the body. It follows, as a natural consequence, that 
the perfection of the bodily organization is essential 
to the full manifestation of the mind. It is, indeed, a 
reasonable presumption that the most perfect bodily 
organism is but an imperfect vehicle of the soul, and 
that in some physical states, as somnambulism, etc , 
the faculties of the soul assert their supremacy and 
indicate their superiority to physical limitations. 
Such phenomena, even when discordant and irregular, 



AUTOMATISM AND FREEDOM. 223 

are gleams of light from the spiritual nature which 
suggest what the future may more clearly reveal. That 
lighting up of the mind before death which was 
noticed by Areteus in Vespasian's time, and so often 
by others since, finds an explanation here. The soul 
may also have faculties which the physical nature has 
no capacity to express ; but of these we must be con- 
tented to remain ignorant. 

4. Classes of psychic influences. In Chapter II, 
section 7, we have seen that all vital functions depend 
upon the psyche, or spiritual nature, and in sections 
14 to 17 have referred to the unconscious actions of 
the nerves as automatic, reflex, inhibitory, or trophic. 
In the chapter on the physiology of consciousness we 
have traced the manifestations of this power from the 
most elementary form to its highest sphere of activ- 
ity. In the present chapter we consider the psychic 
influence upon, or manifested through, the body, as, 
1. Automatic and unconscious. 2. Automatic and 
conscious or semi-conscious. 3. Consciously voli- 
tional. 

5. Unconscious bodily automatism. Among the 
bodily automatic actions of which the mind is uncon- 
scious we name all trophic or nutritive influences, in- 
cluding secretion and excretion. The power of selec- 



224 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

tion in the bioplasm of the tissues (Chapter I, sections 
25 to 30), and the peculiar actions of glands, have 
nothing similar in the inorganic world, but depend 
upon the presence and activity of the psyche ; yet the 
activity is an unconscious one. So likewise is the 
conducting power or special actions of nerves, in 
sensation or motion. The mind is never conscious 
of nerve or muscle or gland as such. The auto- 
matic rhythmical movements of organs, like the 
lungs, heart, and intestines, all reflex actions (Chapter 
II, section 15), including those of the ganglionic system 
and vasa-motor mechanism (Chapter III, sections 16 to 
20), and the harmonious or successive action of the mus- 
cles of the eyes, face, or limbs, in reading, speaking, 
walking, dancing, etc., belong to this class. Many 
movements which were voluntary at first, and perhaps 
difficult, by frequent repetition or habit become auto- 
matic and unconscious. 

6. Unconscious mental automatism,. Psychical acts? 
as well as physical, may be automatic and unconscious, 
since automatism is the result of organized or pre- 
ordained activities. We seldom if ever attend to all 
the steps of the mental processes, or bring every logi- 
cal link of reasoning into consciousness. It is simply 
because there are links in mental activities that they 



AUTOMATISM AND FREEDOM. 225 

may become automatic. A large part of our ordinary 
thoughts and feelings never comes into consciousness, 
although an essential part of that of which we are 
conscious. (Chapter III, section 7). This condition of 
the mind has been called " unconscious cerebration" — 
a term derived from the speculations of the cerebral 
psychologists. It is better described as unconscious 
menial action. Dr. Carpenter and Luys include 
under the term " unconscious cerebration " cerebral, 
or rather* mental, reflex acts which occur involun- 
tarily in response to a stimulus, but nothing is gained 
by separating these from the reflex activities. 

Many instinctive acts in the lower animals which 
seem to require mental power may be accounted for 
by psychical automatism. There is, or may be, no 
conscious purpose, but certain nutritive or inherited 
needs become the initiatory stimuli to a chain of activ- 
ities. We must not forget, however, that reason 
modi lies instinct in animals as instinct often modifies 
reason in man. 

7. Unconscious automatism in disease. Uncon- 
scious automatism, both physical . and psychical, as 
might be reasonably expected, is most manifest in 
abnormal or pathological conditions. 

Many cases of epilepsy, more frequently in the 
15 



226 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

form called petit mal than in the severer forms, ex- 
hibit quite complex acts of automatism which have an 
important bearing upon medical jurisprudence. A 
striking peculiarity of the form called irregular epi- 
lepsy is that a thought which was uppermost in the 
mind prior to the attack exerts a sort of suggestive in- 
fluence upon the acts performed during the uncon- 
scious condition. In some cases the patients respond 
in some degree to what may be said or done by those 
near them, or answer questions with apparent intel- 
ligence. Among a number of such instances reported 
by Dr. Hughlings Jackson is one in which before the 
attack the patient had agreed that his sister-in-law 
should have some cocoa, and during the paroxysm he 
was found stirring the cocoa which he had gone to 
the cupboard to obtain, although utterly unconscious 
of so doing. Dr. Jackson remarks that if he had 
quarreled with his sister-in-law prior to the attack we 
can very readily imagine that this fact might have 
acted upon him in his unconscious condition so as to 
lead him to commit murder. Kleptomania is not an 
unfrequent symptom of such attacks, and has often 
brought the poor patients in contact with the arm of 
the law. " In the simpler forms the patient proceeds 
to do some ordinary but inappropriate act. Often he 



AUTOMATISM AND FREEDOM. 227 

begins to undress, or tries to go np stairs, and will 
climb upon a chair or table or shelf. Very fre- 
quently he puts some object near at hand in his pocket. 
Much more complicated acts may also be done. A 
patient after an attack found that he had taken pas- 
sage in a steamer for Bombay. Gowers tells of a car- 
man who, after an attack, drove for an hour through 
the crowded streets without an accident. Trosseau 
relates the case of an architect who, when seized with 
an attack, would run quickly from plank to plank 
without falling, and Gowers again had a young lady 
patient who, during the epileptic automatism, would 
play the most difficult music. In some cases the emo- 
tional faculties are more involved, and attacks of tran- 
sitory mania, or furious impulse, occur." * 

Cases of trance, either artificial, spontaneous, or 
from disease, also illustrate mental automatism. Arti- 
ficial trance is known under different names, as hyp- 
notism, mesmerism, electro- biology, etc. It is pro- 
duced in sensitive subjects by a fixed attention and 
expectancy, aided either by certain passes or motions 
of the operator's hands or by fixing the eye upon a 
bright object. In a longer or shorter time there ap- 
pears to be a loss of equilibrium in the mental power 

* Dr. C. L. Dana in Reference Hand-book of the Medical Sciences. 



228 PHYSIOLOGY OF TEE SOUL. 

and a concentration upon any suggestion made by the 
mesmeriser. This concentration is so intense that the 
hypnotic is insensible, blind, and deaf to every thing 
else. Under the domination of the suggested idea or 
feeling many automatic complex acts of body or mind 
may be produced, and the senses become more acute 
and sensitive than in the normal condition. Sponta- 
neous attacks of trance or hypnotism sometimes occur 
in persons of hysterical temperament with deficient 
will-power, and are often accompanied by catalepsy, 
ecstasy, or hysteria. These attacks are induced 
voluntarily by the so-called trance-speakers, and in 
some persons they are produced by periodical illness. 
A woman who had severe neuralgia every two weeks 
would fall into a trance at the close of the attack, and 
for an hour or two would discourse eloquently on re- 
ligious subjects. Af # ter such attacks there is usually 
no remembrance of what was done during the parox- 
ysm. Hypnotism or trance may also be produced by 
disease. After an injury to the head a French sol- 
dier would pass into an automatic state lasting for days. 
Tie would unconsciously perform all the routine ac- 
tions to which he had been accustomed. In such 
cases the slightest sensation is often a suggestion or 
stimulus to complicated action. Chronic alcoholism 



AUTOMATISM AND FREEDOM. 229 

sometimes produces an automatism very similar to 
hypnotism, in which actions may be performed with 
apparent regularity, but of which nothing is remem- 
bered when consciousness returns. 

Abnormal, irregular, and overpowering automatic 
mental acts must be regarded as symptoms of insanity. 
In many forms of insanity mental automatism is the 
most evident phenomenon of the disease. The ex- 
citements of mania, the delusions of melancholia, and 
the mental enfeeblement of idiocy and dementia are 
all varied forms of automatic impulse. It would not 
be far from the truth to define insanity as an abnormal 
and controlling automatism. 

8. Semi-conscious automatism. Many automatic 
impulses are attended with consciousness, or with a 
state of the mind which may be called semi-conscious- 
ness, in which the will is powerless while intellect 
and sensibility remain. Cases of reverie and abstrac- 
tion, although guided largely by volition, are on the 
border of this state, while fantasy often carries us 
quite over the line. Automatism may be likened to 
a carriage-horse and volition to the driver. If the 
driver loses hold of the reins, as in such conditions as 
reverie, sleep, intoxication, or the effects of narcotics, 
the horse may master the man. The celebrated Cole- 



230 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

ridge is an example of one whose mind, partly from 
constitutional defect and partly from the use of nerve 
stimulants, seemed seldom free from automatic re- 
verie, dreaming nearly all his life. The poetic frag- 
ment of " Kubla Khan," of fifty -four lines, was com- 
posed in his sleep, and committed to paper, as fast as 
he could write, on awakening. 

We are all conscious of automatic influence over 
which we have little or no control. It suffices for sanity 
that we realize the automatism as our servant and not 
our master. We may be conscious for a while of our 
expanding lungs, or beating heart, although unable to 
arrest either. So the rhythm and progress of our men- 
tal states may be conscious or unconscious to us, but we 
know intuitively or by education where to apply the 
power of mental inhibition, and where to use the 
spur. 

Dr. O. W. Holmes illustrates this subject as follows: 
" We wish to remember something in the course of 
conversation. No effort of the will can reach it ; but 
we say, ' Wait a minute and it will come to me,' and 
go on talking. Presently, perhaps some minutes 
later, the idea we are in search of comes all at once 
into the mind, delivered like a prepaid parcel laid at 
the door of consciousness, like a foundling in a basket. 



AUTOMATISM AND FREEDOM. 231 

How it came there we know not. The mind must 
have been at work, groping and feeling for it in the 
dark ; it cannot have come of itself. Yet all the while 
our consciousness, so far as we are conscious of our 
consciousness, was busy with other thoughts." In 
another place he says, " Our definite ideas are stepping- 
stones ; how we get from one to the other we do not 
know ; something carries us ; we (that is, our conscious 
selves) do not take the step. A creating and inform- 
ing spirit, which is with us and not ffus, is recognized 
every- where in real and storied life. It is the Zeus 
that kindled the rage of Achilles ; it is the muse 
of Homer ; it is the Daimon of Socrates ; it is 
the inspiration of the seer; it is the mocking spirit 
that whispers to Margaret as she kneels at the 
altar, and the hobgoblin that cried, ' Sell him, sell 
him ! ' in the ears of John Bunyan. It shaped the 
forms that filled the soul of Michael Angelo when he 
saw the figure of the great lawgiver in the yet un- 
hewn marble, and the dome of the world's yet unbuilt 
Basilica against the black horizon ; it comes to the 
least of us as a voice that will be heard ; it tells us 
what we must believe ; it frames our sentences ; it 
lends a sudden gleam of sense or eloquence to the dull- 
est of us all ; we wonder at ourselves — or rather, not 



232 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

at ourselves but at this divine visitor who chooses our 
brain as his dwelling-place and invests our naked 
thought with the purple of the kings of speech or 
song." Discount this description for poetic license as 
we may, it still remains true that the activities of the 
human mind are wonderful beyond comparison. Next 
to God. who made it, there is nothing greater than 
mind, whose nature and constitution continually urge 
it to strive to rise above its present environment and 
aspire to the highest perfection. 

9. Sleep and dreaming. The state of body and 
mind during sleep affords a perfect illustration of our 
subject, varying as it does from the freedom of our 
ordinary condition when awake to the most complete 
automatism of sleep, when the mind is totally uncon- 
scious even of dreams. Dreams indicate a state of con- 
scious or semi-conscious automatism. It has been 
generally thought that increased blood-pressure upon 
the brain is the immediate cause of sleep, but the ex- 
periments of Dr. W. A. Hammond show that the 
blood-pressure is decreased in ordinary sleep, although 
increased in stupor. Dr. Hammond believes that the 
exciting cause of sleep is the loss of brain substance 
during its daily activity and the necessity of its restora- 
tion. It is doubtful, however, if the loss of organic 



AUTOMATISM AND FREEDOM. 233 

substance because of its activity, which is reiterated in 
nearly every text-book on physiology, has' any other 
foundation than theory. It is quite certain that a 
muscular fiber under the microscope may be made to 
contract innumerable times without loss of weight. 
The sense of weight in the eyelids, the relaxation of 
the muscles, and the general torpor and languor of the 
entire body which occur before sleep suggest that the 
brain is not the only, if indeed it be the principal part 
of the body affected by sleep. 

We must look beyond the body itself for the real 
cause of sleep, since it is so universal a phenomenon. It 
appears to be a necessity of all living things. Plants 
sleep ; and Linnaeus conceived the thought of con- 
structing a dial of flowers, based upon the times of 
their sleep and waking. Animals also sleep, some 
daily, and others hibernate during a long period. These 
and other physiological facts indicate a law of alterna- 
tion according to which all vital functions proceed. 
Sir James Paget in his Croonian Lecture, delivered 
some years ago before the Poyal Society, pointed out 
that " rhythmical nutrition " is a law of nature ; * and 
the same thought applies to other activities besides nu- 
trition. The wave of muscular contraction in every 

* Dr. Poor on Electricitv. 



234 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

fiber is rhythmical, whether it be voluntary or invol- 
untary in its origin. The action of stomach, intes- 
tines, lungs, and heart are all examples of alternate 
periods of tension and relaxation. The change from 
the conscious volitions of a state of wakefulness to the 
automatism of sleep is but another instance of the same 
kind. 

During sleep all automatic bodily actions continue. 
The lungs breathe, the heart beats, the stomach and 
intestines digest, and the activities of the glands con- 
tinue, but the power of attention to the actions of the 
sense-organs is temporarily suspended. Light may 
fall upon the retina, or sound vibrations upon the 
drum of the ear, but there is no perception. The re- 
flex power of the nerves over the muscles continues, 
but there is no voluntary power to move. 

Dreaming is the semi-conscious or conscious autom- 
atism of psychical activity within the mind itself. 
" As the closed or quiescent senses afford it no 
materials, the mind, ever active, must make use of the 
store which memory retains ; but, as its motor 
influence is likewise organically impeded, it cannot in- 
dependently dispose of this store. Thus arises a con- 
dition in which the mind looks, as it were, on the play 
of images within itself, and manifests only a faint or 



AUTOMATISM AND FREEDOM. 235 

partial reaction. Hence the obscure ideas, which are 
not in this condition dispelled by others that are more 
lucid, attain peculiar prominence, and, as these are sup- 
plied chiefly by the ccensesthesis (Chapter III, 
section 16) this plays, in consequence, a principal part 
in dreaming." * 

10. Somnambulism. Somnambulism, or sleep- 
walking, is a pathological or diseased state having con- 
siderable analogy to dreaming. It differs chiefly from 
the latter by the complete control of automatism over 
the muscles and activities of ordinary voluntary life. 
The somnambulist often performs very complicated 
acts, walks in dangerous places with perfect confi- 
dence, avoids or overcomes obstacles, enters into con- 
versation, writes or paints, or executes work which is 
above his ordinary capacity, and after a time returns 
to bed with entire composure. When he awakes he 
has no recollection of what has passed, but in the next 
fit he remembers the preceding or proceeds to finish 
work which he had commenced. 

We have already intimated (section 3) that, in ab- 
normal or irregular physical states, faculties or powers 
of the soul which are usually held in abeyance may 
exhibit glimpses of their superior nature. It does not 

* Feuchtersleben. Medical Psychology. 



236 PHT8I0L0OY OF THE SOUL. 

follow from this that somnambulism is a more exalted 
state, or one appropriate for divination, in which the 
mind acts independently of the trammels of the body, 
but a lower and pathological condition in which autom- 
atism wields its scepter over every faculty, especially 
over an unrestrained fancy. That the soul, in this 
partially unfettered, yet automatic state, may occasion- 
ally exhibit unusual ability, is not at all a matter of 
wonder. The following account will illustrate our 
meaning : " When the Archbishop of Bordeaux was in 
the seminary he knew a young minister who was a 
somnambulist. In order to become acquainted with 
this singular disease he went every night into his room 
as soon as the minister was asleep, and observed among 
the rest the following facts : The young man arose, 
took paper and ink and wrote sermons. Whenever 
he had finished a page he read it over from the top 
down to the bottom with a loud voice and without 
making use of *his eyes. When a passage did not 
please him he would erase it and write the correction 
with much accuracy above it. The beginning of a 
sermon pleased the bishop much. It was elaborate and 
well written. In order to ascertain whether he had 
made use of his eyes or not a piece of pasteboard was 
placed under his chin so that he could not see the 



AUTOMATISM AND FREEDOM. 237 

paper on which he wrote. He continued, however, to 
write without noticing any thing that the bishop did. 
Again, in order to ascertain how the somnambulist 
could perceive the presence of objects, his paper was 
exchanged for another of a different size. He directly 
discovered it, while a paper of the same size laid in 
the place of his own did not in the least disturb him. 
This case is related in the French Encyclopedia." * 
Rausch thinks that in sleep the life of the soul is 
merged in that of the body and rests principally in the 
ganglionic nervous system, rendering perception anal- 
ogous to that of the lower animals. " Our common 
way of perceiving things is not the only one, and, there- 
fore, what is not analogous to it deserves not to be re- 
jected for that reason merely. In somnambulism, 
feeling, as spread over the whole body, is heightened 
and changed into a capacity of perceiving. The mere 
feeling of any thing within or without becomes a sen- 
sation or perception." 

11. Extraordinary dreams. Dreams in which ex- 
traordinary mental power is automatically exhibited, 
or which manifest a knowledge of distant or future 
events, have occasionally occurred. Many dreams have 
been exaggerated, and a critical judgment should care- 

* Rausch. Psychology and Antlir 



238 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

fully examine the statements of such phenomena ; yet 
there can be no doubt of their reality. To refuse to 
believe them does not annihilate them, but only de- 
clines to consider them. A mathematician will some- 
times Work out a difficult problem, an orator will make 
an effective speech, or a painter will excel himself in 
the practice of his art while completely asleep and un- 
conscious. Dr. Abercrombie tells us of an eminent 
Scotch lawyer who, after several days of intense study 
upon a case of great importance, was seen by his wife 
to rise from his bed, go to a writing-desk and write out 
a long paper. In the morning he told his wife he had 
dreamed of delivering a luminous opinion respecting a 
case which perplexed him. She then directed him to 
the desk, where he found the opinion clearly and 
fully written out. 

Among prophetic dreams there is one "handed 
down by Cicero, who, as is well known, was by no 
means credulous. Two Arcadians came to Megara 
and took different lodging-places. One of them ap- 
peared twice to the other in a dream, first seeking aid 
and then, as murdered, stating that his corpse would be 
taken early in the morning on a covered wagon, pass- 
ing through a certain gate out of the city. This dream 
agitated the other, and going at the appointed time 



AUTOMATISM AND FREEDOM. 289 

toward the gate lie met the murderer with the wagon 
and handed him over to the police." * " The dream 
of Mr. Williams, of Scorrier House, near Redruth, 
fn Cornwall, is fully related in the London Times of 
August 16, 1829. He saw the chancellor killed in 
the vestibule of the House of Commons, and, having 
had the same dream thrice in one night, he communi- 
cated it to many of his acquaintances, all of whom 
were living when the Times gave the account. It was 
ascertained that on the evening of the same day Mr. 
Percival was assassinated by Bellingham." f A few 
such instances as the above might be explained as mere 
coincidences ; but there is a legion of similar well- 
authenticated accounts which leave no room to doubt 
the reality of such things, however difficult it may be 
to explain them. 

12. Double consciousness, or alternations of autom- 
atism. Cases of double consciousness or periodical 
amnesia (or loss of memory) are among the morbid 
manifestatations of automatism. In somnambulism 
the memory of wdiat occurred during one attack is re- 
newed in the next so as to form a continuity of action, 
as in painting a picture, etc., while in the normal state 
there is no recollection of the somnambulic state. 

* Rausch. f Ibid. 



240 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

Something similar occurs periodically in some hys- 
terical or epileptic cases, in which the somnambulic 
condition may last for days or even months together. 
Typical cases of double personality (as it has been 
called), in which the individual lives two lives, each 
attended with a consciousness apparently normal, are 
exceedingly rare. Dr. Dana has collected sixteen 
such cases, * among which is an instance of a young 
lady, intelligent and well-educated, who suffered from 
such attacks. At these times she could play on the 
piano better than in her normal * state. She knew 
every one, and appeared so much like herself that 
strangers would not know that she was in an unnat- 
ural mental condition. The attacks would last from 
a few hours to three days. She did not remember 
what occurred on coming out of them, but while in 
one attack remembered what she had done in those 
previous. 

13. Influence of automatic illusions in disease. 
The commingling of automatic ideas and images with 
the consciously volitional and perceptive faculties in 
some cases of insanity or disease is so complete as to 
puzzle the most competent alienists. Ordinarily the 
creations of an unsound mind are obvious, but some- 

* Reference Hand-Book of the Medical Sciences. 



AUTOMATISM AND FREEDOM. 241 

times they are so interwoven with realities as to im- 
pose on the most skillful. Dr. Guy, the author of a 
well-known text-book on forensic medicine, gives an 
analysis of a case in the Journal of Mental Science 
for July, J 885, the account of which was first pub- 
lished by Dickens in All the Year Hound, October 
5, 1861. In this instance most remarkable illusions of 
sight and sound and touch were repeated under various 
circumstances during several months' time, and wove 
such a thread of connected story as to seem to the 
subject of them more real than the true objects with 
which they were blended. 

14. Automatic acts irresponsible. Within the sphere 
of conscious or unconscious automatism man must be 
regarded as morally and socially irresponsible. His 
psychic activities, whether manifested corporeally or 
intellectually, are but spontaneous and impersonal re- 
actions excited by extraneous forces and regulated by 
the mechanism of organic nature. Even if we believe 
that " millions of spiritual beings walk the earth " 
and play upon our automatic tendencies " whether we 
wake or sleep," the results are not our own. We can 
with no more reason blame or praise a man for auto- 
matic action than a pistol or a rope can be indicted 
and tried for murder. 



242 PHYSIOLOGY OF THIS SOUL. 

15. Maris consciously free volition. If man has 
an organism — which implies mechanism, or arrange- 
ment and connection of parts — which necessarily sub- 
jects him during disease or, by the law of alternation, 
during regular sleep to the control of mechanical law 
alone, it is just as certain that his personality is com- 
pleted by the possession of a consciously free power 
of volition. Man is not a mere waif on the ocean of 
existence, the sport of wind and wave — a mere creat- 
ure of circumstance, possessed by extraneous forces 
and borne onward through time and space by power 
which he cannot resist. Within the automatic piece 
of machinery, partly physical and partly mental, 
which forms the instrument of his daily life, is the 
artfully concealed personality, as in the automaton 
chess-player, whose freedom of choice sets at naught 
all mathematical calculations and all extraneous com- 
pulsion. It may not get away from the moving 
wheels, nor reach farther than the chess-board in 
front, but it will place the pieces in combinations of 
its own choosing, whether skillfully or otherwise. 
This personal ego may retain control of the organism 
and direct its movements, or it may abdicate the 
throne or be forced into retirement by disease, but 
under normal physiological conditions it remains su 



AUTOMATISM AND FREEDOM. 243 

preme in its own sphere. Dr. Carpenter has well 
said, " I cannot regard myself, either intellectually or 
morally, as a mere puppet, pulled by suggesting- 
strings, any more than I can disregard that vast body 
of evidence which proves the direct and immediate 
relation between mental and corporeal agency." * 

16. Definition of free-will. Will, or the power of 
volition, may be defined as conscious self-determina- 
tion, or choice, and the freedom of the will is the 
power of resolving, choosing, or doing otherwise. 
There is a certain self-determination even in automa- 
tism, since the organic life develops from within, and 
depends upon the psyche for all its functions, whether 
physical or mental ; but the idea of automatism is 
inconsistent with freedom, since it is either bodily or 
mental compulsion. In volition the spirit acts freely 
within the sphere of its own personality, so that all 
voluntary acts, are acknowledged to be its own. 

17. Proofs of free-will. The possession of this 
freedom of will is a conscious personal experience. 
I stretch out my hand, or put my pen to paper, or 
throw a stone into the air, and I am perfectly con- 
scious that I could choose to do otherwise. That this 
personal consciousness is universally possessed by 

* Mental Physiology. 



244 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

mankind appears evident from the testimony of lan- 
guage, history, law, and religion. Language expresses 
the beliefs and tendencies of humanity, so that the 
fact that words embodying the sentiment of free-will 
are to be found in all nations is proof of the univer- 
sality of its consciousness. Such words as "ought," 
"responsibility," "merit," "demerit," "sin," "moral- 
ity," and many others, necessarily imply freedom of 
will. The history of mankind is but a history of the 
manifestations of the human will. All human law 
acknowledges freedom, since no man is punished for 
what he could not avoid. In religion, also, the very 
root and foundation is the voluntary worship and 
loyalty of creatures who are accountable, and hence 
free. All human endeavor to influence others by 
education, by legislation, by the agencies of the 
Church or social life, necessarily presupposes the 
possibility of voluntary decision and action in the 
minds of men. The elementary fact of conscience, or 
feeling of obligation, which implies free-will, is as 
certain and as scientific as any other fact, and man 
and society act in accordance with it. Society would 
perish if this feeling were abolished for a single day. 
18. Objections against free-will answered. Al- 
though free-will is acknowledged by the common sense 



AUTOMATISM AND FREEDOM. 245 

of mankind, and is really influential in the conscious- 
ness and conduct of all men, it is opposed by every 
form of mechanical philosophy. One objects to it on 
the ground that the conservation of energy implies 
determinism and is opposed to free-will. We have 
already seen (Chapter I, section 50) that this dogma of 
science is purely an empirical one; a simple question 
of experience ; so that if experience establishes free- 
will it must be admitted, upon scientific grounds. 
Conservation of energy can never determine the 
quality of human action. " The muscles of a mur- 
derer expend the same quantity of motion and of 
heat as those of a hero, and yet the action produced 
is altogether different." * Mechanism cannot account 
for life and sensation, and consciousness, as we have 
already seen. How then can it apply to character ? 
Science ought to be broad enough to embrace differ- 
ent spheres of observation, and it is broad enough 
unless chained by a false philosophy. 

Another objection is drawn from the influence of 
desires and motives upon the determination of the 
will, as if the action of volition could be explained 
by material analogies. As a weathercock turns by 
the wind, so, we are told, are our determinations 

* Pressense. Study of Origins. 



246 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

influenced by our desires and motives. "We may 
fancy that we are self -directed, but we are quite mis- 
taken ; we are acted upon. This objection is based 
upon a false and superficial psychology. Actual ex- 
perience shows, it is true, the influence of desire and 
motive, but it shows in consciousness the conflict and 
superiority of the will. The resistance of the will to 
desire and motive is continually witnessed in every 
sane mind. 

19. Animals not automata. Descartes regarded all 
animals as automata, or machines, in whom the signs 
of joy and grief, of anger and fear, are merely signs 
of a motion in their animal spirits, whatever that 
term may mean, similar to that which is sometimes 
induced in us by external objects, without the partici- 
pation or judgment of the mind. He acknowledged 
a thinking soul in man, capable of reason and speech, 
infused into the human machine ; but this seems to 
have been a concession to the opinions of others 
rather than an outgrowth of his philosophy. Many 
others, like Descartes, regard animals as machines, 
influenced by sensori-motor automatism, or impelled 
by the blind force of desire, or instinct, without free- 
will. In Chapter II, section 38, we argued in behalf of 
the conscious intelligence of animals, even brainless 



AUTOMATISM AND FREEDOM. 247 

invertebrates. The same remarks will apply to their 
volition also. In very many instances we meet with 
actions in the lower animals which cannot be ac- 
counted for by automatism. Ordinary curiosity in 
animals, when their appetites are not in the least con- 
cerned, as when a dog gets upon a chair and watches 
from the window the traffic going on in the street ; 
playful whims, as of a kitten playing with a string ; 
the exhibition of judgment, as when a cat looks be- 
hind a mirror to find the object reflected in it, or 
jumps up to a latch to open a door, and the choice 
of means displayed in cases of danger ; for when an 
object causing fear excites certain muscles to move 
the brute's legs (to use Descartes's language) and 
cany it away, it does not run away from, but across, 
the danger, if it can thus reach a door, or gap, for 
escape, whereas in an open field it runs straight away. 
A single case of such choice being proved we must 
admit some presiding faculty, or independent mind, 
which judges the impression and directs the limbs 
what to do. 

20. Personal will in insects. The directing volun- 
tary power, or personal will, is seen in insects as well 
as in higher animals, yet in this class the ventral 
nervous cord, answering to the spinal cord in ver- 



2i8 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

tebrates, and supposed to be the center of purely 
reflex movements, greatly predominates, and a large 
number of their actions are evidently automatic. Yet 
volition is as evident among them as in human society. 
Draper tells us " Insects form societies for mutual 
assistance, defense, invasion, emigration,' mere pleas- 
ure — societies which undoubtedly arise in the experi- 
ence of passions, such as love and fear. Of these the 
duration is variable ; some last through the larva state 
only, some are confined to the imago, some are main- 
tained through life. The organization by which the 
object is accomplished is various — monarchical, repub- 
lican. The caterpillars of the processionary moths 
are guided in their march by a leader ; the termites obey 
at once a king and a queen. The lust of power is not 
alone felt among, human monarchs; the queen bee 
never rests till she lias assassinated her rival. All 
insects of the same kind are not born equal, nor do 
all pursue the same occupation ; some follow a life of 
leisure, some devote themselves to the profession of 
arms, some are laborers. When the metropolis of 
the termites is attacked, the laborers, as non-combat- 
ants, retire, but the soldiers come out. The ants, with 
which we are more familiar, engage in military and 
filibustering expeditions ; they make reconnoissances, 



AUTOMATISM AND FREEDOM. 249 

set sentinels, march in a definite order, the van alter- 
nately falling to the rear ; their lines of communica- 
tion are maintained, and, if necessary, swift couriers 
are dispatched for re-enforcements. If successful they 
not only carry off the enemies' stores, but reduce the 
vanquished to actual servitude, compelling them to 
work as slaves. They have notions of property, and, 
though some of them practice cannibalism, they will 
amuse themselves in more pleasant occupations, tum- 
bling and playing together like kittens or puppies. 
With a sentiment of strict justice the wasp who has 
returned from a successful foray divides his booty 
among the males, females, and the laborers who have 
been working in the vespiary ; nor is the sentinel, 
who is doing duty at the door, forgotten. If, through 
the chances of war or by accident, any one has re- 
ceived a grave injury, in some tribes the most devoted 
sympathy is shown ; the ant will carry his wounded 
friend out of the heat of the fight ; in other tribes a 
more than Roman firmness is displayed : the sufferer 
is put out of his pain by his companion. Expecting 
an attack, some insects will shut their doors at night 
and barricade them within, or, if the danger is con- 
tinual, will build masked gateways in succession, with 
interior walls that command them. They are no con- 



250 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

temptible engineers. They can construct and main- 
tain roads of great length, with paths branching from 
them, which, if necessary, they keep mown. They 
cross streams by throwing themselves into floating 
bridges, and the damage done to their premises by an 
invader they show the most singular skill and alacrity 
in repairing. Plow many are the contrivances to 
which insects resort to carry out their purposes ! The 
caterpillar of the cabbage butterfly makes a ladder 
and goes up it ; the geometrical caterpillar lets down 
a rope, and, for fear of hurting himself, drops a foot 
at a time. The gossamer spider sends forth a thread 
fine enough to act like a balloon, and, floating in the 
air, he descends or rises by winding it up or letting it 
out. There are other insects which make diving-bells 
and go under the water. No bird makes a net, no 
beast a pitfall : men and insects do both. A gang of 
sailors will carry a spar by supporting it on alternate 
sides on their shoulders; a gang of ants will, in like 
manner, carry a straw or a long worm. There are 
spiders which show as much dexterity as an Indian in 
sneaking forward to get in reach of their prey." 
This somewhat romancing description largely con- 
founds the voluntary and instinctive activities; yet 
no competent observer can long doubt respecting 



AUTOMATISM AND FREEDOM. 251 

the presence of volition in the lower forms of 
life. 

21. Limit of the sphere of volition. ISTo one im- 
agines that free-will has unlimited power. Were this 
so it would be almighty, and could exist but in one 
subject. The created will meets with a thousand 
restrictions on every hand. Long before personality 
is awakened in consciousness, the basis of nature, 
which is the sphere of personal activity, has been 
arranged according to law, and the hereditary physi- 
cal and psychical type of life, in which personality is 
localized, lias been determined. Each man is born 
not only with the nature common to man, but with a 
particular impress, according to sex, race, nationality, 
and family tendencies. In addition, each has his own 
peculiar nature, shown by a distinctive organization, 
with abilities and inclinations which differ in some 
respects from all others. A localized personality, as 
we have already seen, implies organization and autom- 
atism which necessarily restrict psychical power, and 
determines, to some extent, at least, its manifestation. 
Yet the conscious free-will, in its own sphere — the 
sphere of character — is supreme, and even in the 
development of natural individuality is a co-determin- 
ing agency. It can even take advantage of cosmic 



252 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

laws to change the face of the landscape, or develop 
agencies, as the steam-engine or the telegraph, which 
enlarge the boundaries of man's natural realm. 

Feuchtersleben properly distinguishes between 
metaphysical and psychological freedom. The one 
refers to the human spirit as a spirit, the other to the 
human person in whom the spirit is linked to the 
body. He says, " The metaphysical question of free- 
dom is this — is the spirit free ? and must be answered 
in the affirmative; for the very idea of spirit supposes 
the independence of all corporeal limitations. The 
psychological question of freedom is this — is this 
man, as a person, free ? For freedom may, 1. Limit 
itself, in so far as the spirit makes itself the servant 
of sin or error. This limitation pertains to ethics and 
logic. 2. It may be limited from without, in so far 
as the laws of nature impede our actions or determine 
their consequences. This limitation belongs to phys- 
ics, etc. 3. It may be limited by organization, 
w T hich, in the fact of personality, reconciles the psy- 
chical principle with the somatic." To indicate this 
limitation, its boundaries and degrees, is the task of 
the psychological physician. This task is by no 
means an easy one. It is so complicated by the 
mental and physical peculiarities of constitution, by 



AUTOMATISM AND FREEDOM. 253 

temperament, sex, age, habits, idiosyncrasies, nation- 
ality, education, and other relations, that it is often 
hard to determine the boundary of personal respon- 
sibility. " When the psychical principle in a man has 
obtained such a mastery over his organs as, consist- 
ently with his individual personality, it is capable of 
obtaining — when the man so thinks, feels, and wills, 
as, for example, in the character of a person of san- 
guine temperament, of a youth, of a person of emi- 
nent talents, of strict behavior, of a Frenchman, of a 
nobleman and soldier, he can and ought to think, feel, 
and will — he is psychologically free ; that is, with 
respect to psycho-physical circumstances, in health. 
If lie cannot do this he is not free ; that is, he is out 
of health."" The same writer gives us the following 
illustration : " If a man, traveling on a railroad, is 
prevented by the rapid shifting of the scenery from 
discerning the landscape he is mechanically unfree. 
If he does not attend because his heart is stupidly 
insensible to the beauties of nature he is ethically 
unfree. If he does not attend because he has not 
learned what is to be seen and discriminated in these 
objects he is logically unfree. If he does not attend 
because he is engaged by an interesting conversation 
he is hindered by his personality, which he may, how- 



254 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

ever, command. If lie cannot attend because he is 
suffering from headache, or because a mental image 
floats so vividly before him that he does not perceive 
outward objects with his bodily eye, he is out of 
health, and consequently irresponsible." * 

22. The determination of responsibility. The self- 
determination of responsibility is much more easy 
than to determine it in another. Its boundary is the 
fact of conscious volition. " Here begins the domain 
of pure thought, which discriminates between good 
and evil, truth and error, and thereby determines the 
existence of pure will (not desire). This function of 
the spirit is free w T ith every personality. Even the 
most sanguine, so soon as the fact of consciousness is 
awakened in him (and prior to this he has no person- 
ality), is able to govern himself." f In accordance 
with this view the law refuses to acknowledge the ex- 
istence of irresistible influence in a sane mind, and it 
is a generally acknowledged principle in the diagnosis 
of emotional insanity and transitory mania that there 
will be either a history of pre-existing mental disease 
or evidence of a disordered mind. The plea of tran- 
sitory mania or irresistible influence is quite too 
frequently resorted to in courts of justice as a shield 

* Medical Psychology. t Ibid. 



AUTOMATISM AND FREEDOM. 255 

for crime, and tends to undermine the authority of 
law. In all such cases the evidence of deliberation 
and preparation should be sufficient to set the plea 
aside ; for while it is true that in ordinary insanity, 
whether acute or chronic, the patient may act with 
cunning and deliberate art, and even malice, the ex- 
plosion of uncontrollable emotion, or a transitory in- 
sanity which expends its force in the insane act, can 
never be accompanied with deliberation. 

23. Volition initiative or regulative. The power 
of volition is limited to mental choice, either as initi- 
ative or regulative, all the successive steps being auto- 
matic. " When we will to cough (as for the purpose 
of giving a signal or putting down a tedious speaker) 
we merely touch the spring, as it were, of a mechan- 
ism which automatically combines the multitude of 
separate actions that are required to produce the re- 
sult; just as when we pull the trigger of a gun or 
open the valve which admits steam into the steam- 
engine." * " In the most purely volitional move- 
ments — those which are prompted by a distinct pur- 
posive effort — the will does not directly produce the 
result, but plays, as it were, upon the automatic appa- 
ratus by which the requisite nervo-muscular combina- 

* Carpenter's Mental Physiology. 



256 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

tion is brought into action. No better illustration of 
this doctrine could be adduced than that which is 
furnished by the act of vocalization, either in artic- 
ulate speech or in the production of musical tones. In 
each of these acts the co-ordination of a large number 
of muscular movements is required ; and so complex 
are their combinations that the professed anatomist 
would be unable, without careful study, to determine 
what is the precise state of each of the muscles con- 
cerned in the production of a given musical note or 
the enunciation of a particular syllable. Yet we 
simply conceive the tone or the syllable we wish to 
uttter, and say to our automatic self, ' Do this,' and 
the well-trained automaton does it." * The same may 
be said of all voluntary motions. Some of these be- 
come secondarily automatic, or habitual, by frequent 
repetition, so as to act independently of the will. Thus 
walking, and similar acts, nmy be initiated voluntarily 
and continue without consciousness, or they may be 
consciously guided or checked by the power of will. 
The same is true of mental activity also. We have 
already seen that psychical as well as bodily acts may 
be entirely automatic, but that in our normal or 
healthy state the mind, within certain limits, has the 

* Carpenter's Mental Physiology. 



AUTOMATISM AND FREEDOM. 257 

power of volitional control or freedom of choice. The 
manner in which this control over automatism is 
exerted and the results accruing from its exercise 
have been well set forth by Dr. Carpenter in the work 
already quoted. He says, " The power of the will is 
exerted in the purposive selection, from among those 
objects of consciousness w T hich sensations from with-- 
out and the working of the internal 'mechanism of 
thought and feeling' bring before the ego (whether 
simultaneously or successively), of that wdiich shall be 
determinately followed up ; and in the intensification 
of ike force of its impression, which seems the direct 
consequence of such limitation. This state is what is 
termed attention; in regard to which it was well said 
by Sir William Hamilton that its intensity is in a pre- 
cisely inverse ratio to its extensity. It is solely by 
the volitional direction of the attention that the will 
exerts its domination, so that the acquirement of this 
power, which is within the reach of every one, should 
be the primary object of all mental discipline. It is 
thus that each individual can perfect and utilize his 
natural gifts by rigorously training them in the first 
instance, and then by exercising them only in the 
manner most fitted to expand and elevate, wmile re- 
straining them from all that would limit or debase. 
17 



258 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

In regard to every kind of mental activity that does 
not involve origination, the power of the will, though 
limited to* selection, is almost unbounded. For 
although it cannot directly bring objects before the 
consciousness which are not present to it, yet, by con- 
centrating the mental gaze (so to speak) upon any 
object that may be within its reach, it can make use 
of this to bring in other objects by associative sug- 
gestion. And, moreover, it can virtually determine 
what shall not be regarded by the mind through its 
power of keeping the attention fixed in some other 
direction, and thus it can subdue the force of violent 
impulse and give to the conflict of opposing motives 
a result quite different from that which would ensue 
without its interference. This exercise of the will, 
moreover, if habitually exerted in certain directions, 
will tend to form the character by establishing a set 
of acquired habitudes, which j no less than those de- 
pendent upon original constitution and circumstances, 
help to determine the working of the ' mechanism of 
thought and feeling.' In so utilizing it the will can 
also improve it by appropriate discipline ; repressing 
its activities where too strong, fostering and develop- 
ing them where originally feeble, directing all health- 
ful energy into the most fitting channel for its exer- 



AUTOMATISM AND FREEDOM. 259 

cise, and training the entire mental, as it does the 
bodily organisms, to harmonious and effective working. 
And thus, in proportion as our will acquires domination 
over our automatic tendencies, the spontaneous suc- 
cession of our ideas and the play of our emotions show 
the influence of its habitual control, while our charac- 
ter and conduct in life come to be the expression of 
our best intellectual energies, directed by the motives 
which we determinately elect as our guiding principles 
of action." * 

2-1. Influence of volition on character. The knowl- 
edge of the mode in which volition controls automa- 
tism is of great importance in personal life. The 
conflict of will and desire is the " good fight of faith " 
to which we are all summoned, and in which if we 
conquer we " lay hold on eternal life." Little by lit- 
tle we give a determinate direction and habitude to 
character, so that the tendencies of to-day, which now 
seem to be our nature, were once matters of choice. 
Our physical constitution, or moral temperament, or 
social surroundings may be perturbing influences, but 
they are not determining. The universe does not 
crush us under its wheels like a huge Juggernaut- 
car. Our inward moral sense testifies to the contrary. 

* Carpenter's Mental Physiology. 



260 PHY810LOQT OF THE SOUL. 

It charges us with the wrong which we have volun- 
tarily done, and there is no appeal from this verdict 
of conscience, and no extenuating circumstances can 
silence it. The possibility of amendment, of regener- 
ation, is also based upon the freedom of the will. For 
if man were the slave of an irresistible fate a reversion 
of his character would be impossible. Feeble as the 
will of a man may be who has yielded himself to be 
" the servant of sin," it can yet be enfranchised, and 
made subordinate to spiritual progress. 

25. The education of the will. The distinction 
between the volitional and automatic powers of the 
psyche has an important bearing upon the theory and 
practice of education. Professor Huxley tells us that 
" it is because the body is a machine that education is 
possible." He says, "Education is the formation of 
habits, a superinducing of an artificial Organiza- 
tion upon the natural organization of the body, 
so that acts which at first required a conscious 
effort eventually become unconscious and me- 
chanical. If the act which primarily requires a dis- 
tinct consciousness and volition of its details always 
needed the same effort education would be an impos- 
sibility." Although implying necessarily a power ex- 
terior and superior to the organism, this view is a 



AUTOMATISM AND FREEDOM. 261 

natural outgrowth of mechanical philosophy. It 
limits education wholly to physical acts. A more 
enlightened physiology regards the conscious willing 
soul as well as the body, and looks upon education as 
the training necessary to improve the power of self- 
control and develop a character of habitually virtuous 
tendencies. 

Until the will, therefore, can rule the automatic 
tendencies of mind and body there is no self-control, 
and the character is, of course, only the result of the 
original constitution and environment. Dr. Morell 
has well said, " The education of the will is really of 
far greater importance, as shaping the destiny of 
the individual, than that of the intellect ; and it 
should never be lost sight of by the practical educator 
that it is only by the amassing and consolidating our 
volitional residua in certain given directions that this 
end can be secured. Theory and doctrine and incul- 
cation of laws and propositions will never of them- 
selves lead to the uniform habit of right action. It is 
by doing that we learn to do ; by overcoming that we 
learn to overcome ; by obeying reason and conscience 
that we learn to obey ; and every right act which we 
cause to spring out of pure principles, whether by 
authority, precept, or example, will have a greater 



262 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

weight in the formation of character than all the theory 
in the world." * 

Dr. Carpenter concludes his excellent chapter on 
the influence of the will on the conduct with the fol- 
lowing suggestive remarks: "The highest exercise of 
the will is shown in those who are endowed with 
vigorous intellectual powers, and whose strong 
emotional nature gives force to all their tendencies to 
action, but who determinately fix their attention on 
the divine ideal and steadily endeavor to shape their 
character and direct their conduct in accordance with 
it. This is not to be effected by dwelling exclusively 
on any one set of motives or by endeavoring to repress 
the energy which is in itself healthful. Even the idea 
of duty, operating alone, tends to reduce the individual 
to the subservience of a slave doing his master's bid- 
ding rather than to make him master of himself ; but 
it gives most powerful aid in the acquirement of that 
power of fixing the thoughts and affections on ' things 
on high ' which most effectively detaches them from 
what is earthly and debasing. It is by the assimila- 
tion rather than by the subjugation of the human will 
to the divine that man is really lifted toward God ; 
and in proportion as this assimilation has been effected 

* Carpenter's Mental Physiology. 



AUTOMATISM AND FREEDOM. 263 

does it manifest itself in the life and conduct, so that 
even the lowliest actions become holy ministrations in 
a temple consecrated by the felt presence of the 
divinity. Such was the life of the Saviour ; toward 
that standard it is for the Christian disciple to 
aspire." * 

* Carpenter's Mental Physiology. 



264 PHYSIOLOGY OF TEE SOUL, 



CHAPTER V 

Heredity. 



OUTLINE OF ARGUMENT. 

Heredity implies typical form and development. The facts 
of heredity relate to external form, internal structure, 
special variations, disease, psychical peculiarities and 
habits. Materialistic theories are insufficient, while the 
admission of psychical inheritance explains all the facts 
of influence on body, intellect, and moral power. The 
methods of heredity are initial, direct, alternate, and col- 
lateral. There are also exceptions to heredity. All these 
varieties show the power of individuality, which may op- 
pose checks to the heredity of national and personal 
traits, of disease, of intellectual tendencies, and of moral 
evil. 

1. Heredity. Heredity is the reproductive energy 
of living beings exhibited by the transfer of bodily or 
mental peculiarities from one generation to another. 
These peculiarities include not only the character- 
istics which belong to the species, or race, but some- 
times acquired personal conditions also. It applies to 
every thing that lives — plants and animals, as well as 
men — and cannot therefore be omitted from the inves- 
tigation of the laws of life and mind. 



HEREDITY. 265 

2. Individuality. Individuality is the opposite 
pole to heredity in personal experience. Not that 
heredity and individuality are necessarily antagonistic, 
but both exist in the same living being and modify 
each other. Our studies of nature show us a bond of 
unity among all living things in the nature and prop- 
erties of living matter, or bioplasm, which forms tissues 
and organs according to an intelligent plan, and con- 
serves the specific characters of each ; but we see evi- 
dences of individuality also. Every living thing in 
the universe has a distinctive character, or nature, of 
its own, by which it is distinguished from all other 
things ; yet no one exists by itself, or for itself, but 
has points of contact with those around it, as well as 
with past and future history. In human beings the 
mutual influence of body and mind and the domi- 
nancy of free moral agency constantly tend to qualify 
or change hereditary traits. This renders the study 
of heredity one of great difficulty. 

3. Environment. Environment, as well as indi- 
viduality, greatly influences heredity. It is so potent 
that some speculative philosophers have denied indi- 
viduality as a separate, or independent, factor of living 
beings, declaring it to be only the product of heredity 
and environment. The phyllogenic lines of descent 



266 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

for both species and genera, which writers of the 
monistic school make essential to the study of natural 
history, illustrate this kind of speculative science. 
Generally fanciful, or only remotely analogous, and 
seldom agreeing with each other, they form a sort of 
chevaux de /rise, in some books and journals of mod- 
ern times, which is a terror to students of ordinary or 
practical sense. Yet individuality cannot be ignored 
any more than heredity, or the influences of the en- 
vironment. A difference in either of these factors 
would have produced a different sort of being. To 
know perfectly the nature of these principles, and the 
order of phenomena dependent upon their adjust- 
ments, would require us to know the entire cosmos — a 
thought which may well suggest humility, since per- 
fect knowledge belongs to the Omniscient alone. 

4. Science not perfect. It is no disparagement to 
the subject of heredity to say that its problems can be 
but partially solved. The same can be said of every 
branch of science. " We know but in part." The 
starry firmament is as mysterious as the multitude of 
living germs. The appearance of a new star is not 
less wonderful than the beginning of individual life. 
What the irresolvable nebulae are to astronomy the 
germs of living beings are to biology. Science may 



HEREDITY. 2G7 

not be able to explain all that relates to the stars or 
to the life, but it has observed and classified many of 
the phenomena connected with them. Guided by 
its teaching we inquire after the facts, the theories, 
the methods, and the checks of heredity. 

5. Heredity not development. The term heredity 
expresses the tendency of all living beings to repeat 
themselves in their descendants. This necessarily im- 
plies a typical form for each species, which remains 
unchanged amid incessant variation within the limits 
of that form. Thus every seed in the forest, every 
bird of the air, and every living thing of earth and 
sea, produces only its own kind. Like produces like. 

The idea of a chain of development in nature, sug- 
gested by Kant (see Chapter I, section 45), has 
been quite popular with monistic writers, and in the 
form of transmutation of species by natural selection 
is widely spread under the name of Darwinism. An 
examination of this doctrine will show that it is based 
upon a mistaken conception of development. For 
" the survival of the fittest " is not sufficient to ac- 
count for the facts. It might apply to the degrada- 
tion or extinction of species, and their substitution 
by others, but not to their elevation. There can be 
no advance in the scale of being without additional 



268 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

power. If eacli successive step be only the necessary 
consequence of the preceding it could only be a rep- 
etition, a reiteration. All the transformations imag- 
inable can never produce from a thing what is not in 
it. Like produces only its like ; the unlike and the 
higher must proceed from a distinct individuality 
which determines its own development from the in- 
determinate according to the plan of its own nature. 
Limitations and malformations occur from the influ- 
ence of the environment and the order, or law, of 
bioplasmic growth ; but the distinctive type of the 
species is realized through the progressive or con- 
structive power belonging to each individual. 

6. Potency of the germ. The active power or indi- 
viduality (psyche) which determines the type or place 
which each living thing shall occupy in the field of 
nature exists in connection with an excessively mi- 
nute portion of bioplasm, or living jelly, before the 
production of the mechanism, or organs. In the germ 
the future being exists only in a latent or undeveloped 
state, but potentially each germ contains the structure 
and functions of its proper species, whether simple 
or complex. 

7. Development of germs various. The growth 
and development of the germ proceeds according to 



HEREDITY. 269 

the law of cell-division. (See Chapter I.) By the 
process of division a sort of rejuvenescence, as it is 
termed, takes place, which renders the cell capable of 
indefinite multiplication. In unicellular organisms 
this division completes their life-history, but multicel- 
lular organisms are more complex, and the germ- 
power is of higher order. It controls a differentiation 
of cells for the division of labor, and so produces va- 
rious tissues in the same body, and it combines, or co- 
ordinates, all the tissues and their functions for the 
purposes of the individual life. 

In addition to the difference between the germs of 
unicellular and multicellular organisms there are also 
differences of power among the more complex. One 
germ develops in one way and another in a different 
way ; one kind may manifest the stages of growth 
which systematic biology deems regular, while another 
sets our systems at defiance and suppresses various 
stages of growth. Yet amid all varieties it is possible 
to trace resemblances and principles which indicate 
the reign of law or the purpose of intelligent design. 
It is quite impossible to arrange organic forms in a 
single line, or series, like the steps of a ladder. There 
are no such gradations in nature as some imagine. 
Living things are best studied in groups, according 



270 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. - . 

to types or representative forms, exhibiting well- 
defined plans of structure. Agassiz has well said, 
"If these classifications are not mere inventions, if 
they are not an attempt to classify for our own con- 
venience the objects we study, then they are thoughts 
which, whether we detect them or not, are expressed 
in nature — then nature is the work of thought, the 
production of intelligence, carried out according to 
plan, therefore premeditated — and in our study of 
natural objects we are approaching the thoughts of a 
Creator ; reading his conceptions ; interpreting a system 
that is his and not ours." 

8. The human ovum. The human ovum, small as the 
point of a needle, and weighing only one ten-thousandth 
part of a grain, has in it the power to determine what 
kind of matter or pabulum shall be appropriated by 
it, and how the particles of that matter shall be ar- 
ranged so as to build up tissues and organs of varied 
forms and structure. The heart, the brain, the nerves, 
the muscles, bones, lungs, digestive organs, and organs 
of sense, are by this wonderful embryonic power de- 
veloped from materials so similar as to be quite indis- 
tinguishable from each other in our best microscopes. 
Not only is the general form and character of external 
and internal organs thus determined, but minute par- 



HEREDITY. 271 

ticulars, as the features, color of hair, eyes, and skin, 
exact shape of fingers, special deformities, and all in- 
herited tendencies whatever. 

9. Differences among germs. There are not only 
differences in power among germs, but differences in 
appearance and surroundings which are as important 
to study as their resemblances. These distinctions 
are usually ignored by evolutionists. Dr. Allen 
Thompson, in the Cyclopedia of Anatomy and Phys- 
iology, tells us that " there are considerable differences 
in the chemical composition of the ova of animals of 
different great groups, and even among those not far 
removed from each other in the zoological scale," and 
Clark, in his Mind in Nature, declares that the char- 
acters which constitute the type of any animal are 
plainly seen in the embryo. The egg, or spore, of 
the lowest kind of plant or animal is a simple cell, 
which by self- division and growth gives rise to new 
generations. In the higher vegetables, or phanero- 
gams, seeds differ from spores only in the fact that de- 
velopment progresses considerably before they are 
detached from the parent plant, and a deposit of 
starch is laid up for the nourishment of the embryo 
until it is able to obtain it from external sources. 

Among animals some lay eggs and hatch them, 



272 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

or place them where the sun's heat may hatch them, 
while others hatch them within their own bodies. In 
some animal eggs the entire ovum during develop- 
ment is subdivided into cells, and the j are called holo- 
blastic, while in others, where there is a large amount 
of food-yelk, only a part of the ovum, the germinal 
disk, is so divided, and these are called meroblastic. 
Birds' eggs are meroblastic and mammal's holoblastic, 
and Balfour teaches that the differences are not only 
accompanied by differences in segmentation, but in- 
dicate differences in the stages of development which 
follow segmentation. * 

10. Comparison of germs. Both the parallelism 
and the differences among ova may be illustrated by 
the comparison of a few groups. 

The development of the protens animalcule, or am- 
oeba, and that of a family of elementary plants, the 
myxomycetes, is so nearly alike that the same de- 
scription will suit either. Like many other unicel- 
lular organisms they may be found either in a quies- 
cent cysted or changeable motile form. In the latter 
both nucleus and cell subdivide to form a new indi- 
vidual. Yet even unicellular organisms differ in 
different families. The protococci remain rounded cells, 
the oscillatoria and other families have an instinct for 



HEREDITY. 273 

elongation, so that they become tubular cells. Some 
distribute their coloring matter in characteristic spiral 
patterns, varying in each species, while the diatoms 
appropriate silica from their food to harden their 
outer surface and arrange dots and lines with marvel- 
ous beauty and precision. Some unicellular animals 
make shells of carbonate of lime, perforated by 
minute openings for the passage of threads of living 
tissue ; others secrete beautiful siliceous shells, while 
others are naked. Some live solitary, others form 
colonies, as the vorticella and the sponges. 

The seed of the flowering plant, as the bean, when 
opened shows the growing plant with its plumule and 
radicle considerably developed, being nourished by 
the starchy food stored up in the cotyledons. But in 
an earlier stage, before the fall of the flower, it was 
a single nucleated cell, like all eggs. The manner 
of procedure differs, but the principle is the same 
which leads in the bird's egg to the storage of food- 
yelk for the use of the embryo. 

11. The first vital actions com/plicate. It may seem 
a very simple thing for a piece of bioplasm to divide 
itself, but modern investigation shows it to be a very 
complicated act, having no parallel in inorganic nat- 
ure. It has been observed that all cells whatever, 
18 



27-i PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

whether in the embryo or adult, in plant or animal, in 
vertebrates and invertebrates, in embryonic develop- 
ment or tissue-growth, show complicated structural 
changes, the result of vital activity, previous to divis- 
ion. This process has been named karyokinesis, 
or nuclear division. The living net-work of the 
nucleus, into which the elementary bioplasm ar- 
ranges itself, becomes more distinct, then forms a 
convolution, succeeded by an unraveling of the fibers 
and their arrangement into a wreath or rosette, which 
becomes an aster or star, and finally a dyaster, or 
double star, which is the beginning of the new, or 
daughter nuclei, which produce division of the cell. 
There are differences observable, especially in in- 
vertebrates and lower vertebrates, and in pathological 
new growth ; but this is the general process. 

12. Type soon shovm in the emhryo. The embryo, 
with all its tissues, is the result of cell-division ; yet the 
type of the future being is seen early. First of all 
there is a fission, forming two cells, then a sub-division 
into four, and afterward into numerous segments, re- 
sulting in what is called a " mulberry mass." When 
the whole yelk is taken into the mulberry mass, as in 
some invertebrates, the embryo results from progress- 
ive metamorphosis, the cells of the surface being con- 



HEREDITY. 275 

verted into integument, and those of the inner part 
into the internal organs, as in ascaris acuminata, 
an intestinal worm. The egg of the spider under- 
goes but partial segmentation of the yelk, and the 
blastoderm, or portion of the yelk which is developed, 
thickening into a primitive band, is divided into rings 
or zones, to which new segments are added, forming 
the mouth-parts and legs of the young spider — which 
lies upon the surface of the yelk, and is hatched in a 
form like the adult. In the vertebrate egg (as in the 
frog, etc), after the mulberry stage of division, and ap- 
pearance of a blastoderm, there is first a primitive 
streak, for the neural canal, which is formed by the 
thickening edges of the streak in the external layer 
closing on the top. The hollow part of the ovum 
below the primitive groove becomes the visceral cavity, 
so that a section would show a double tube. The 
blastoderm itself has three layers : the epiblast, or outer 
layer, which gives rise to the skin and nerve-centers ; 
the inner layer, or hypoblast, lining the alimentary 
canal ; and the mesoblast, or middle layer, from which 
most of the tissues originate. 

All these varieties of egg-development, and all forms 
of reproduction and formation of tissues and organs — 
fibrillation or cell-multiplication by fission or budding, 



276 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

whether sexual or non-sexual— are but manifestations 
of the power of heredity in individual life. They 
are the natural methods of preserving the several kinds, 
or species, of living beings, and of transmitting the 
peculiarities and tendencies of one generation to 
another. 

13. Heredity of external form. The transmission 
of external form is a fact of common experience. 
Family resemblances are seen every day. Among 
the Romans family names were often derived from 
hereditary peculiarities. The limbs, the trunk, the 
head, the hair and nails, and especially the features of 
the face, often show the power of heredity. A little 
spot on the iris has been transmitted from parent to 
child. A few abnormally long hairs in the eyebrows 
have characterized members of certain families, and a 
patch of prematurely gray hair has been observed 
through several generations. Darwin knew an Irish 
gentleman with a small white lock in the midst of 
black hair. His grandmother had the same, and his 
mother one on the opposite side of her head. Scars, 
moles, and other family marks are often faithfully 
transmitted from parent to child. In some families 
there is a tendency to obesity, even in the midst of 
hard labor and privations. 



HEREDITY. 277 

14. Heredity of constitution. The internal con- 
stitution shows the influence of heredity as well as the 
exterior. The bones, blood-vessels, muscular, digest- 
ive, and nervous systems, may all exhibit transmitted 
peculiarities. The blood and other fluids differ in 
certain families, both in character and quantity. Thus 
a predisposition to anaemia, scrofula, hemorrhage, and 
inflammation may be repeated from age to age. In 
some families there is such a liability to hemorrhage 
that the prick of a pin may cause a fatal flow of blood. 
Fecundity and longevity depend less upon climate and 
mode of life than upon heredity. Life insurance 
companies depend largely upon information respect- 
ing the longevity of the ancestors of those applying 
for insurance. 

15. Heredity of variations. Variations from the 
normal type of organization are sometimes, but not 
always, communicated to the offspring. The cause of 
these diversities will be considered hereafter. One of 
the strangest cases is that of " the porcupine man," 
Edward Lambert, whose skin, except the face, the 
palms of the hands, and the soles of the feet, was 
covered with horny warts or excrescences, which rat- 
tled when he moved, and who moulted periodically. 
Such individual anomalies are not always permanent, 



278 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

since heredity is a permanent tendency to return to 
the primitive type. Lambert had six children, all of 
whom, from ♦the age of six weeks, presented the same 
singularity. The only child who survived transmitted 
it to all his sons, and it passed from male to male, 
through five generations, when it ceased. In the 
Colburn family there was a supernumerary finger and 
toe on each hand and foot, but the peculiarity grad- 
ually died out during four generations. Albinism, 
hare-lip, and other anomalies, are often transmitted. 
In a Siamese family three generations had faces and 
bodies covered with long hair, and had deficient teeth. 
Inability to distinguish colors sometimes runs in fami- 
lies. The famous chemist, Dalton, and two of his 
brothers were thus affected ; hence the name of dal- 
tonism has been given to that peculiarity. 

16. Heredity of disease. Hereditary diseases have 
been recognized from time immemorial. Whether 
we regard heredity as the transmission of material 
germs or of tendencies, inherited predisposition to 
disease is an undoubted fact. All those chronic con- 
stitutional complaints which may be termed diatheses 
and* cachexies, as scrofula, cancer, syphilis, gout, and 
arthritis, very often descend from parents to children, 
and if such diseases appeared in the ancestors at a cer- 



HEREDITY. 279 

tain age, they tend to re-appear in the offspring at 
the corresponding age. Epilepsy, hysteria, scrofula, 
and rickets generally appear in childhood and youth, 
while cancer, gout, gravel and calculi are often heredi- 
tary conditions manifest in the adult. 

Among many remarkable instances of hereditary 
transmission of disease is the history of what was 
called the " Wetherbee ail," or progressive muscular 
atrophy ; a wasting of the muscles from disease of the 
spinal cord. In the Wetherbee family it was traced 
through three generations and in a family in Germany 
through six generations, some of each generation es- 
caping while others succumbed to the disease. 

17. Heredity of mental traits. The transmission of 
psychical peculiarities, as distinguished from the bodily 
nature, is also frequent, although by no means uniform. 
According to the views maintained in the present 
work we should expect to find all automatic influences, 
whether physical or intellectual, exhibiting a tendency 
to transmission, although subject in some degree to 
modification by individual freedom and environment. 
Galton has shown* that genius and talent are trans- 
mitted from parent to child under the same limita- 
tions as form and feature. He reviews the relation- 

* Hereditary Genius. 



280 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

ships of eminent men in England for one hundred 
years, and finds one half of the illustrious men had 
eminent relatives. Ribot * gives long lists of painters, 
poets, and musicians, designed to show the part be- 
longing to heredity in these cases. In these lists many 
cases are doubtful, while others cannot be disputed. 
No great poet can be named who inherited his powers, 
but a family predisposition for music or painting is 
not uncommon. In Titian's family nine meritorious 
painters occurred, and in the family of Bach are 
enumerated twenty-nine eminent musicians. There 
have been families of scientific men also, as those of 
Jussieu and Bernouilli. A genius for statesmanship, 
or for war, has sometimes been traced for several 
generations in families. In all such cases, however, 
education may have had as much influence as he- 
redity. 

18. Heredity of habits. Habits, or acquired dis- 
positions, are often inherited. We have already seen 
(Chapter IY) that voluntary actions, often repeated, 
become automatic, so that, if heredity transmits psy- 
chical tendencies, habitual volitions, as well as instincts 
or impulses, are repeated automatically in the descend- 
ants. Darwin tells of a father and son each of whom 

^Heredity. 



HEREDITY. 281 

had the curious habit of striking the nose with the arm 
when asleep. A case is related by Dr. Burgess of a 
father, mother, and ten children, who were hindered 
from society because Of painful blushing. Paget saw 
a mother and daughter blushing with a splash of red 
on one cheek first, and then other splashes on face and 
neck. Handwriting, which depends on a combina- 
tion of physical and mental habits, is often observed 
to be hereditary, and governed by the same laws as 
other transmissions. 

The habits or practices of parents often beget au- 
tomatic instinctive impulses in children, as seen in 
alcoholism, narcotism, and sensuality. These inherited 
impulses are not only troublesome to physicians, but 
form a large proportion of the trials which constitute 
the battle of life. " The passion known as dipsomania, 
or alcoholism 5 is so frequently transmitted that all are 
agreed in considering its heredity as the rule. JSTot, 
however, that the passion for drink is always trans- 
mitted in that identical form, for- it often degenerates 
into mania, idiocy, and hallucination. Conversely, in- 
sanity in the parents may become alcoholism in the 
descendants. This continual metamorphosis plainly 
shows how near passion comes to insanity, how closely 
the successive generations are connected, and, conse- 



2S2 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

quently, what a weight of responsibility rests on each 
individual.* 

19. Summary of the facts of heredity. The per- 
sonal individuality of the soul, whose highest charac- 
teristic is conscious volition, can, according to the 
views we advocate, mold, direct, or antagonize the 
influence of heredity as a part of its environment, and 
so manifest its moral character and responsibility ; yet 
there can be no doubt that all characteristics which 
depend upon bodily or automatic psychical conditions, 
as slowness or quickness of thought or speech, a dispo- 
sition to certain studies and pursuits, and many instincts 
and passions, may descend from one generation to 
another as readily as rickets or consumption or long life. 

20. The cause of heredity. We have been consid- 
ering heredity as the natural method of preserving the 
several kinds, or species, of living beings, and of 
transmitting the peculiarities and tendencies of one 
generation to another. To call it natural, however, 
expresses no conception of the method. We see every 
day that the egg of a worm produces only a worm, 
that of a spider only a spider, and that of a bird only 
a bird ; but it is desirable to find a rational, or scien- 
tific, explanation of the fact. 

* Kibot on Heredity. 



HEREDITY. 283 

Whatever influence heredity may have upon a liv- 
ing being, either bodily or psychical, it was present 
with, and concentrated in, the first germ-cell, which 
was the beginning of individual life. We may take 
from the sea three similar transparent eggs, which 
under the microscope will appear exactly alike. In a 
jar of sea-water, exposed to the same conditions of 
light, heat, air, and chemical surroundings, one of these 
eggs may become a star-fish, another a crustacean, and 
the third a vertebrate. " Similar things under similar 
conditions cannot give rise to widely different results, 
and there seems no escape from the conclusion that 
these three eggs are not similar, or even essentially 
alike, but that one of them is a potential star-fish, 
another a potential crustacean, and a third a poten- 
tial vertebrate ; that there is in each of them a some- 
thing which separates it very widely from the other 
two, and determines its future history."* To know 
what that ".something v is will be to understand the 
cause of heredity. 

21. Early evolutional theory. The early theories 
of evolution which prevailed in the seventeenth cent- 
ury, and were advocated by such naturalists as Bon- 
net, Spallanzani, and Haller, maintained the pre- 

* Heredity, by W. K. Brooks. 



284 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

existence of material forms in the germ, but the 
discoveries of modern science have shown this view 
to have been unfounded, and have established the 
truth of epigenesis. The existence of the new being 
begins with its first manifestation or conception. No 
pre-existing form has been found in an ovum. The 
old evolutional hypothesis claimed that all generations 
were contained in the first, one, physically, like a nest 
of boxes shut up one within another, and that each 
ovum contained a miniature organism, perfectly 
formed, which only needed enlargement by growth to 
complete its life-history. Harvey's studies of the de- 
velopment of the chick, followed by the researches of 
Wolff, Yon Baer, and other embryologists during the 
last fifty years, have proved that the embryo is not 
unfolded out of, but is gradually built up from, the 
ovum. 

22. Darwin's pangenesis. The modern evolu- 
tional theory has been proposed by Mr. Darwin, under 
the name of pangenesis. It teaches not only the pre- 
existence of material germs, but that there are germs 
of every organ and molecule of the bodies of each 
generation, which literally reproduce themselves 
during all stages of development, and which unite in 
the ovum to form a new individual. Of course this 



HEREDITY. 285 

theory is wholly hypothetical, conjectured for the 
purpose of finding some explanation of heredity which 
may be consistent with the doctrine of natural selection. 

It is a grave objection to Darwin's imaginary gem- 
mules to consider the almost infinite number needed, 
on this theory, to transmit acquired and inherited 
characteristics from near and remote ancestors, and 
the impossibility of crowding them into so small a 
space. A still more fatal objection is founded on the 
fact that a parent, in whom a cancer or other foreign 
growth may appear late in life, may have children or 
grandchildren who exhibit the same disease at the 
same period of life, showing the transmission of a 
tendency, or potency, but no evidence of material 
germs of disease. 

The incorrectness of Darwin's theory has been 
proved experimentally by Galton. He transfused 
the blood of various sorts of rabbits into the veins of 
eighteen of the silver-gray variety, in some cases re- 
placing one half of the blood. Now, if Darwin's 
theory were true, this would have produced a mixture 
of the breeds — gemmules of the blood being conveyed 
to the germ, but the contrary took place. From the 
eighteen rabbits operated upon eighty-six young were 
produced, and all of them were pure silver-gray. 



286 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

Mivart urges an unanswerable objection against 
Darwin's theory, amounting practically to an experi- 
mental demonstration, drawn from the Jewish custom 
of circumcision. According to pangenesis, that rite 
ought now to be superfluous from the continued ab- 
sence of certain gemmules through many centuries 
and generations, since the theory teaches that no creat- 
ure can develop an organ unless it possesses the form- 
ative gemmules inherited from its ancestors. 

According to pangenesis, mutilations, such as ampu- 
tated limbs, should be transmitted to posterity, since 
the formative gemmules are lacking in them, and 
scars, like those of small-pox, or arrested development, 
as the compressed feet of Chinese women, should be 
inherited likewise; all of which are contrary to 
experience. 

23. Materialistic eplgenesis. The doctrine of 
epigenesis, or the development of an organism from a 
single germ or particle of living matter, has been 
pressed into the service of the monistic and material- 
istic philosophy in such a manner as to give it the 
aspect of a theory of evolution. It is claimed that 
this development is a repetition of the evolution of its 
species from a unicellular ancestor. Haeckel, who is 
the chief expositor of this belief, declares that heredity 



HEREDITY. 287 

is the memory of the plastidules, or molecules, of the 
cells, and variability their power of perception. His 
reasoning is based upon the view that the cells of an 
organism are independent living beings. 

This theory substitutes a multitude of souls in each 
organism instead of a single soul. It is wholly dis- 
proved by recent microscopic discoveries, already re- 
ferred to, which show an organism to be not a mutu- 
ally agreeing combination of cells, but a net-work of 
living tissue running from cell to cell, giving unity to 
the whole body. It is also oj^posed by the conscious- 
ness of unity in the human mind. 

If the analogy between the f cetal development of an 
animal from the egg and the evolution of its species 
from the simplest forms of life could be proved, as it 
certainly has not been, it would not explain heredity, 
or how the peculiarities of a parent are transmitted. 

24. Psychological heredity. Either a materialistic 
or a spiritualistic philosophy of heredity may be based 
on epigenesis. In the one case inherited mental 
powers or affections are considered to be caused by 
bodily organization ; in the other the psychological in- 
heritance is regarded as the efficient cause of the bodily 
affection. The latter view, in our opinion, is the only 
one which rationally accounts for the phenomena, 



2S8 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

25. Power only transferred to ova. To observa- 
tion or science there is no difference between an infer- 
tile and fecundated ovum ; jet the one perishes in a 
short time, like any other piece of tissue removed 
from the vitalizing power, but the other develops, 
according to what we term heredity, all its specific and 
race characteristics, and many individual traits of its 
progenitors. Not by the transmission of material 
particles from the parent does this occur, but by the 
transfer of power or tendency to the newly-generated 
being, which is so different from any thing observed 
in the non-living that it may be properly called vital 
or psychological. 

26. Influence of vital isomer in heredity of bodily 
structure. In the bodily structure this power at- 
tracts, re-arranges, and appropriates material particles 
in special forms, according to the type of its species, 
and with reference to the performance of functions. 
Not unintelligently, although unconsciously, is the 
" imperfect substance " " curiously wrought," " in 
secret, 1 '' since every thing corresponds to type and use, 
and all the members of the body "in continuance 
were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them." 
The same intelligence which, unconsciously to the in- 
dividual, arranged the typical plan and ordained the 



HEREDITY. 289 

law of heredity had prevision of future changes, as in 
the case of cancers, etc., occurring at a certain age. 
Dr. Beale has well said, " It is by the transmission of 
power to matter, rather than by the bodily transfer- 
rence of millions of particles of matter having partic- 
ular properties and detached from matter having 
similar properties, that inherited peculiarities are 
handed down from parent to offspring. And it must 
be borne in mind that structure-forming capacity, 
which, is not even rendered evident until forty or 
fifty years shall have passed since the original germ- 
speck originated in the parent, may affect pounds 
weight of matter not one grain of which will be ac- 
quired until long after every atom of that primitive 
speck shall have ceased to live and have been removed 
from the organism. Matter, with its forces, continu- 
ally comes and goes, while power only remains unim- 
paired and preserves its identity. Power has been 
handed down — has been transferred from old particles 
to new particles of matter ; but the original matter — 
nay, in the case of some of the largest animals, hun- 
dreds weight of matter must have come and gone 
while the original power remained." 

Professor Wilkinson, Superintendent of the Cali- 
fornia State Asylum for the Deaf, Dumb, and Blind, 
19 



290 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

has related to me an instance which seems to demon- 
strate that it is power or tendency which is transmitted 
by heredity, and that material particles only serve as a 
vehicle for the transmission. The grandfather of one 
of his patients was born with perfect hearing, but be- 
came deaf at five years of age, in consequence of scar- 
let fever. His two sons were born with perfect 
hearing, but became deaf at live years of age. A son 
of one of these, the patient of Dr. Wilkinson, was also 
born with perfect hearing, but, like his father and 
uncle and grandfather, lost his hearing when he was 
live years old. Here we see the transmission of a ten- 
dency which remained latent in two generations for 
live years, and was developed without acquired or 
accidental disease. 

27. Inherited power in intellect. In the intellect 
the inherited power manifests itself in the slowness 
or quickness of the perceptive faculties, in a dull or 
brilliant imagination, or a greater or less capacity for 
abstract reasoning. As the nervous system is the chief 
organ of intellectual life, in its reception of external 
influence and manifestation of its powers, it may read- 
ily be conceived how an inherited nervous affection 
may impede intellect. Hence the large number of 
idiots begotten by drunken parents. 



HEREDITY. 291 

28. Inherited power in morals. In the moral 
character the power of heredity is seen far less in the 
nobler elements of spiritual life than in the tendency to 
perpetuate sensual habits, or irregular affections, or 
an obstinate or feeble will. 

29. Phenomena as real as laws. It is the boast of 
materialistic philosophers that their science is con- 
cerned only with the investigation of laws, not sus- 
pecting that such a boast is an expression of one- 
sidedness if not of weakness. Ribot thus exhibits the 
popular sentiment of his class : " Let us suppose all the 
facts of the physical and moral universe reduced to a 
thousand secondary laws, and these to a dozen primi- 
tive laws, which are the final and irreducible elements 
of the world ; let us represent each by a thread of 
peculiar color, itself formed of a collection of finer 
threads ; a superior force — God, nature, chance, it 
matters not what — is ever weaving, knotting, and un- 
knotting these and transforming them into various 
patterns. To the ordinary mind there is nothing be- 
sides these knots and these patterns ; for it these are 
the only reality ; beyond them it knows nothing, sus- 
pects nothing. But the man of science sets to work ; 
he unties the knots, unravels the patterns, and shows 
that all the reality is in the threads." The assurnp- 



292 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

tion of superiority to " the ordinary mind " revealed 
in this passage is quite striking ; yet nothing could be 
more specious and vague than its conclusions. Using 
Ribofs own illustration, we submit that a true and 
more perfect science would lead the investigator to 
consider not only the threads but the Weaver, as he 
is revealed by the weaving, and the patterns and knots 
also. To consider either as the only reality is as un- 
satisfactory as it is incomplete. Phenomena are as 
real as their laws, and the cause of law and phenomena 
as real as either. Indeed, we may say that laws are 
unreal in comparison with phenomena and causes. 
Laws are but intellectual expressions of methods or 
order of occurrences. They have no force of them- 
selves ; hence it is scientifically inaccurate, as Dr. 
Carpenter has well shown, to speak of any thing occur- 
ring by law ; in strict truth we should say " accord- 
ing to law." 

30. Materialistic theories illusory. Naturalists 
who seek a material cause for vital phenomena are 
chasing a phantom. The power transmitted by hered- 
ity is only conveyed and manifested by matter. The 
continuance of individual identity amid the changes 
and decay of material parts shows plainly that the 
power is not matter, but the master and controller of 



HEREDITY. 293 

matter ; compelling it to forsake old affinities and enter 
into new relationships for the purposes of the organ- 
ism, and dismissing it when its task is done. Rather 
than accept the old and simple view, which teaches 
the reality of a spiritual essence in each living thing, 
our modern materialists resort to the theory of myri- 
ads of germs, each of which is as powerful, complex, 
and mysterious as the completed organism. Such 
theories resemble the Hindu cosmogony, which placed 
the world on the back of an elephant, and this upon a 
tortoise, whose standing was undetermined. 

31. No scientific objection to py serological heredity. 
If we admit a dualism in nature, and concede the mu- 
tual influence of body and spirit, there can be no 
scientific objection to the idea that the ovum is not 
merely an accumulation of material molecules, but 
contains also a special power or force which is a man- 
ifestation of the soul, and which has inherited certain 
tendencies, or methods of sensitive, intellectual, and 
voluntary activity, according to which, tendencies it 
constructs, with a sort of unconscious intelligence, the 
organs of the body. Such inherited tendencies may 
be illustrated by the manner in which millions of rays 
of light are refracted to the focus of a lens, and pass 
beyond in straight lines without jostling or interrup- 



294 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

tion. Just as the converging rajs pass straight through 
a single geometrical point or focus to diverge into 
space beyond do the multitude of ancestral impulses 
combine in a germ and pass on to the generations to 
come. Some of them may be deflected or absorbed 
or neutralized by individuality, but enough remain to 
characterize the new being and its progeny for ages. 

There is nothing more inconceivable in the thought 
of transmission of spiritual nature than in that of 
transmission of physical energy. As flame kindles 
flame and propagates its own properties to hundreds 
of others without diminishing or changing, or as the 
magnetism of multitudes of steel bars results from the 
power of a single magnet without the transfer of a 
single material particle, so may the power of an or- 
ganism be transmitted. 

32. Methods of heredity. The methods of heredity 
are not uniform. Species and race characteristics are 
more potential and more permanent than individual 
peculiarities. The latter are the result of spontaneity 
and are variations from the general type. If sponta- 
neity were the only method in nature there would be 
complete diversity in living beings, no two being 
alike, and if heredity were alone there would be noth- 
ing but absolute resemblances. It is the min^lin^ of 



HEREDITY. 



295 



these two principles which, renders education and free- 
will possible in despite of the influence of our environ- 
ment. Accessory circumstances also may account for 
some variations from ancestral types. Observed facts, 
however, present us many exceptions and peculiarities 
which are inexplicable, and we can only classify em- 
pirically the methods or varieties of heredity, as cases 
of initial, direct, alternate, and collateral transmis- 
sion. 

33. Initial heredity. Initial heredity refers to the 
qualities impressed primarily on the new being by the 
influence of the temporary qualities or affections of 
the parents when they become parents. Since the days 
of Jacob, who laid the striped and spotted rods before 
the stronger cattle, the reality of initial influence has 
been believed, and M. cle Quatrefages has referred to 
the frequent transmission from parent to child of the 
actual and momentary state of the former at the time 
of conception as a proof of the universality of heredity. 
The plrysical, intellectual, and moral degeneracy of 
our " street Arabs " might be traced, if opportunity 
served, to the sensual depravity of drunken parents. 

34. Direct heredity. Direct heredity is the trans- 
fer of the permanent qualities of parents to children. 
Sometimes the child resembles both parents, and at 



296 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

others but one of them. We often hear such phrases 
as, " this child reminds one of its father," or ""that 
child is the image of its mother." These resemblances 
are sometimes seen in the same sex, as when the son 
resembles the father and the daughter the mother ; 
but most often the resemblance affects opposite sexes, 
so that the daughter is like the father and the son like 
the mother. Ribot refers to many historical cases of 
both kinds of direct transmission. Goethe resembled 
his father physically, but psychologically his mother. 
Robert Cromwell, grandson of the terrible and fren- 
zied instrument of Henry VIII. in his contest with 
Rome, married Catherine Stuart, a second cousin of 
Charles I. To Oliver, the only male among the seven 
children, passed the enthusiastic and powerful genius 
of the Crom wells, and it raised him to the highest sta- 
tion. Oliver took to wife Eliza Bouchier, a woman 
of gentle disposition. His male issue were "Arcadian 
shepherds," his daughters more fanatical than himself. 
Most physiologists admit the frequency with which 
resemblances pass from mother to son or from father 
to daughter. In the next generation it returns to the 
other sex again. 

35. Alternate heredity. Alternate heredity is some- 
times called the law of atavism or reversion. It is the 



, HEREDITY. 297 

reproduction of the qualities of the grandparents. 
Here heredity seems to skip one or two generations. 
What naturalists call the alternation of generations has 
been compared to atavism. In 1818 Chamisso dis- 
covered that certain molluscs called biphorse or salpse 
are alternately free and aggregated. In. the first gen- 
eration chains of biphorse are found, the product of 
gemmation ; in the second they are single, produced 
by spores ; in the third the chains re-appear ; so that 
the young never resemble the parent, but always the 
grandparent. The researches of other naturalists show 
that in some animals the cycle is not limited to these 
generations. Thus, in the medusa, we have in the first 
generation the medusa, in the second a ciliated larva, 
in the third a polyp, in the fourth a strobila, and in 
the fifth a medusa again. In these cases it is not, as 
in metamorphosis of insects, etc., the same individual 
passing from a larva to a nymph and then to an adult 
state. Here we have several individuals totally differ- 
ent from each other. 

Such facts should induce us to consider heredity in 
a broader sense than the mere transfer of material par- 
ticles. That certain forms, characters, and instincts 
may remain latent in an individual, or a series of in- 
dividuals, and re-appear in a subsequent generation is 



298 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

a crucial instance of the transmission of influence, as 
also are hereditary diseases at corresponding periods. 

36. Collateral heredity. Collateral heredity is the 
re-appearance of qualities or tendencies from other 
branches of the same family out of the direct line of 
descent, as between uncle and nephew, aunt and niece, 
granduncle and grandnephew, and cousins, even in re- 
moter degress. Bibot shows that this is a form of 
atavism, differing from it only in appearance. " The 
nephew resembles the uncle, the cousin resembles the 
cousin, because each of them hold some characteristic 
from a common ancestor, who transmitted it to the in- 
termediate generations in whom it has been latent." 

37. Exceptions to heredity. In addition to vari- 
ations in the modes of transmission there are also ex- 
ceptions to the principle of heredity itself, as in the 
sudden appearance of persons of superior intellect or 
special peculiarities. The law of heredity is not 
abolished by these exceptions any more than the law 
of gravitation is suspended while I throw a stone into 
the air, or because a tree grows upward. In all these 
cases one law may be antagonized by another, but not 
abolished. It is in the mutual interactions and balanc- 
ings of laws that science will find its true resting- 
place ; and the neglect of these is the cause of so many 



HEREDITY. 299 

philosophic controversies. Here, also, is the aim of 
true wisdom in the practical affairs of life. To find 
the true relation of the physical to the spiritual, of the 
automatic to the voluntary, of the hereditary to the in- 
dividual, is to find the key to unlock the mystery of 
life. 

The theories of evolution and origin of species do 
not admit of individual spontaneity ; yet even these 
theories allow of variations from hereditary types by 
the action of surrounding circumstances — that is, of 
accidental and fortuitous causes, which they term se- 
lection, natural, artificial, or sexual. All these theories 
are ruled by the old realism which conferred substan- 
tial reality upon species. In truth, it is the individual 
only which is substantial, and species are but groups 
of similar individuals. If we say that individual ex- 
istence is derived and its powers inherited we do not 
therefore deny its separateness. It is just as much a 
creation — a new factor in the universe — as if it were 
the first of its kind. In Chapter I, section 48, we 
quoted from Bowne the idea that in what is called 
" the conservation of energy " the elements are so re- 
lated to each other that they mutually condition each 
other's action. " There is no mysterious and ethereal 
something gliding from one thing to another. No 



300 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

element receives any tiling from other elements except 
that they furnish the conditions npon which it may 
manifest its own power of action." We apply this 
principle to the development of individuality by 
heredity. A consistent theist must maintain that nat- 
ure is a constant miracle, and all things come to pass 
because of God's omnipresent power ; yet this is by no 
means inconsistent with an intellectual unity and con- 
tinuity in nature, which renders " every antecedent a 
preparation for every consequent." Thus science be- 
comes possible, although the world exists as " the 
means of development and service of free beings." 

38. Checks to heredity. The checks or influences 
which are antagonistic to heredity and produce vari- 
ations and exceptions are important, not only to 
science, but to the well-being of human life. They 
prove that we are not mere waifs on the ocean of ex- 
istence or the subjects of irresistible fate and invari- 
able law, but under a beneficent order of progress, 
which uses even antagonizing forces for the purposes 
of development, and that the final result of the strug- 
gle is largely within our own control. 

39. Checks to bodily inheritance. The bodily 
structure which results from inheritance of the charac- 
teristics of species or race is the strongest manifestation 



HEREDITY. 301 

of heredity, and is generally regarded by naturalists to 
be of fixed and irrevocable type. Mr. Darwin's ac- 
count of the variations in pigeons and other animals 
by domestication, and his arguments in favor of 
natural selection, have led many to believe in the 
transmutation of species, and phylogenetic lines of de- 
scent, both for species and genera, have become a 
favorite method of treating natural history. No case 
of transmutation of species, however, has yet been 
proved, and the evidence from embryology and 
palaeontology, so clearly set forth by Agassiz, showing 
that there is no such gradation in nature as transmuta- 
tion implies, has never been set aside. There can be 
no doubt that many varieties have been termed species, 
and cases of alternation of generations and of met- 
amorphosis have been wrongly described ; and it is a 
chief merit of Darwin's work that it has shown the 
flexibility rather than the invariability of nature, yet 
specific heredity still holds its ground. 

The reversion of species to the original type, when 
the constraint of environment or of individuality is 
removed, and often in defiance of such constraint, is 
proof sufficient of the power of heredity. Thus such 
cultivated plants as cauliflower, broccoli, etc., revert 
to the form of the wild cabbage when the conditions 



302 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

are changed, and the various kinds of pigeons revert 
to the blue rock variety when they become wild. 

40. Checks to national and family inheritance. 
The effects of heredity upon national and personal pe- 
culiarities are greatly influenced by conditions of life, 
which are incessantly inducing fresh variability. The 
fusing of national traits into the typical and cosmopol- 
itan American is a striking example. 

The decline of families and of nations is seen by the 
degeneration of their character, institutions, and man- 
ners ; but the real cause is either hereditary tendency 
to degeneracy or the antagonism of individual will and 
environment to inherited vitality. In either case he- 
reditary power may be increased by cross fertilization. 
A recognition of this fact is seen by the condemnation 
of consanguineous marriages by the laws of Menu, 
the Mosaic code, the laws of Rome, the decrees of 
Christian councils, and the text of the Koran. Niebuhr 
says that " aristocracies obliged to recruit their num- 
bers from among themselves become extinct." Esquirol 
and others give this reason for the frequency of men- 
tal alienation and of its heredity among the great fam- 
ilies of France and England. 

41. Checks to hereditary diseases. In hereditary 
diseases, whether appearing early or late in life, modern 



HEREDITY. 303 

medical science can do much to modify and change 
the tendencies, if not to cure the actual morhid con- 
dition. Disease is no longer regarded as a morbid 
entity to be driven out of the system, but as an alter- 
ation of vital structure or function. Even new 
growths, as tumors, whether malignant or otherwise, 
are regarded as constituted of physiological elements 
or natural tissue-cells which have an acquired or in- 
herited tendency to pathological growth. Hence the 
art of the modern physician is directed to the constitu- 
tional vitality of the patient as well as to the removal 
of diseased conditions. Within the past twenty years 
pulmonary consumption, perhaps the most commonly 
inherited disease, has been robbed of its terrors and 
many cases perfectly cured. It is not too much to 
hope that cancers and other malignant inheritances 
will also become subject to the skill of the physician. 
Hygiene and preventive medicine are yet in their in- 
fancy, but have already reduced the death-rate in the 
tables of mortality by a considerable percentage. 

42. Education in intellectual heredity. Inherited 
intellectual tendencies present a grave problem to ed- 
ucators. As the physical environment, climate, food, 
dress, etc., influence the physical organism by their 
incessant action, and modify or change hereditary 



304 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

temperament, so education, as a moral environment, 
silently acts upon the mind and influences both its 
hereditary and spontaneous powers. If education were 
only the formation of habits its relation to heredity, 
as well as to individuality, would be evident ; but when 
we regard it as furnishing to the mind the knowledge 
of its own capacities, and to a large extent the power 
of self-control, it appears as the principal agent of in- 
tellectual advancement. To supply defects of individ- 
ual capacities, to restrain and check useless or abnor- 
mal tendencies, to cultivate harmony between the 
moral, intellectual, and physical character, and in 
special cases to foster special talents or aptitudes with- 
out injury to other faculties, are more important ob- 
jects to the true educator than to foster strength and 
grace in walking, riding, rowing, fencing, and danc- 
ing, or to teach the elements of several languages, how 
to make verses, or to study music and painting, give 
a superficial view of science and philosophy — in short, 
most of what is taught in modern schools, so as to con- 
form youth to. the usages and conventionalities of so- 
ciety. This latter is not education, but only a poor 
pretense and substitute for it. We ought not to ascribe, 
even to true education, more than belongs to it. It 
may develop the body, harmonize the intellectual fac- 



HEREDITY. 305 

ulties, inform the memory, strengthen the power of 
reasoning, and polish the manners to the requirements 
of civilization, but it cannot revolutionize the charac- 
ter. 

As Lamarck and Darwin make the physical en- 
vironment a creator of new species, so many have re- 
garded education as a primitive former of character. 
Leibnitz said, " Intrust me with education, and in less 
than a century I will change the face of Europe." All 
this is exaggeration. Certain psychical qualities exist 
previous to education, and often assert themselves in 
spite of it. Thus Alexander began his career of con- 
quest at twenty years of age, Scipio Africanus at 
twenty-four, Charles XII. at eighteen, Bonaparte at 
tw T enty-six, etc. " The same precocity in many 
thinkers, artists, inventors, and men of science shows 
how small a thing education is compared with spon- 
taneity." * 

The influence of both heredity and individuality is 
often antagonistic to education. Examples of chil- 
dren in religious families who are skeptical or perverse, 
or religious children in skeptical and worldly families, 
of dissipated men among good examples, or of 
ambitious, imperious men in quiet, gentle families, are 

* Eibot's Heredity. 
20 



306 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

quite familiar. . Yery often, too, the beauty of educa- 
tion is but a very thin covering, a glossy varnish, which 
scales off on the slightest friction and reveals the 
brutal and sensual nature with all its savage instincts 
and unbridled appetites. Carlyle calls civilization only 
a covering, underneath which the savage nature of 
man continually burns with an infernal fire ; and the 
history of the world shows how readily the deepest 
moral degradation can co-exist with a high state of 
culture. 

43. Remedy for moral evil. For the world's 
hereditary malady of sin, or the tendency to moral 
evil, there is no remedy but the infusion of a new life. 
Education, philosophy, vows, associations, all are good 
for restraint ; they may chain the tiger for a time, but 
nothing but a new inspiration of creative power can 
transform the nature and develop from the interior of 
the human spirit the things which are true, and good, 
and lovely, and of good report. 

Thus our study brings us to the infinite source of 
all power and being — to that science which Bacon de- 
clared to be the sabbath of all our labors, the divine 
day of repose and consummation to the intelligence. 
Here we find light for our intellect and hope for the 
soul. Hereditary moral evil may be overcome by 



HEREDITY. 307 

spiritual power from the original fountain of life. 
The possibility and experimental truth of this follows 
logically from that scriptural psychology which re- 
gards man as more than body and brain, or mere 
intellect enshrined in matter, but as possessing also 
a higher spiritual nature, whose powers and capacities 
rightly inspired and directed will make him finally 
victorious over " the law of sin and death." 



308 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 



CHAPTER VI. 

The Biblical Psychology. 



OUTLINE OF ARGUMENT. 

The psychology of the Bible teaches the dualism of matter 
and spirit, and accords with physiology. Its references to 
various bodily organs as representative of psychic activi- 
ties are inconsistent with the cerebral psychology, but 
agree with the facts of science. Its doctrine of man's 
spirit, or pneuma, as distinguished from the mind, or 
psyche, is the most central truth of physiological psy- 
chology as well as of systematic theology. 



1. Psychology of comparative theology. The his- 
toric method of investigating human nature, which 
undertakes to collate the thoughts of the ages, is as 
legitimate a mode of study as physiology or meta- 
physics. Under the title of comparative theology a 
large amount of material has been collected from the 
ancient books of India and China and the Arabic 
Koran. Careful examination of this reveals that the 
ideal understratum of these teachings is but a repeti- 
tion of the biblical story of the patriarchal and sub- 



THE BIBLICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 309 

sequent times. Man's essentially spiritual nature, 
inherited tendencies, and essential freedom underlie 
tliem all. 

2. Place of the Bible in literature and science. 
The most conservative students of the Bible claim 
that it teaches the most complete historical truth 
regarding man's nature and destiny. Its more en- 
thusiastic believers accept it as a divine revelation of 
absolute truth concerning man's nature and duty, 
needing only ordinary industry and sincere loyalty to 
truth on the part of the investigator in order to attain 
accurate and satisfactory knowledge. On the other 
hand, many who are skeptical as to divine revelation 
regard it as containing the early opinions of the civil- 
ized world regarding God and man, mingled with 
legends and fancies of later times. 

3. Biblical psychology essentially true. The Bible 
does not attempt to teach systematic science of any 
kind ; yet its claim to be a revelation of the highest 
and most important things requires that it be con- 
sistent w T ith exact truth concerning man's nature. 
Errors in physics, if they could be proved to occur in 
the Bible, would be immaterial compared with errors 
in psychology. We may conceive it to be quite pos- 
sible for very imperfect and ignorant human media to 



310 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

convey perfect spiritual truth, which would be in no 
way marred by the rudeness of the containing vessel ; 
but fundamental error respecting man's real nature 
would vitiate the claim of the Bible to be a revelation 
from God. This principle is as true respecting the 
earlier as the later revelations recorded in the Bible. 
As perfect biological functions occur in elementary 
organisms as well as in the more complex, so the 
earlier revelations to mankind were based upon man's 
real nature and faculties as truly as their full develop- 
ment in subsequent history, and the Old and New 
Testaments are in exact correspondence as to psycho- 
logical teaching, differing only as the flower differs 
from the fruit. 

4. Biblical psychology in fragments. The Bible is 
a library of books, rather than a single volume. It 
contains more than sixty treatises — historical, poetical, 
didactic, and epistolary — and records the development 
of religious history among the Jews and their ances- 
try, from the creation to the establishment of Chris- 
tianity. Its views of man's nature occur in scattered 
notices, and as an underlying inference, or general 
tendency of thought, which pervades the entire work. 
As the psychology of Homer or Shakespeare may be 
gathered from selected passages from their books, so 



THE BIBLICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 311 

the biblical psychology lies scattered in various parts of 
the Scriptures. For the purpose of study we must 
isolate, compare, and arrange these fragments into a 
consistent system, and collate them with the legitimate 
teachings of science. This is the province of the 
theologian, whose anthropology embraces, not only 
the results of ordinary psychology, but also the higher 
realm of sjnritual truth. At present we content our- 
selves with a brief review of the subject. 

5. Biblical and physiological psychology in har- 
mony. The importance of biblical psychology as a 
branch of theology is more evident than formerly. 
The province of biology has been invaded by the 
combined forces of agnostic unbelief and of material- 
ism, and they have been signally defeated on the chosen 
battle-field. Materialistic science always found a bar- 
rier in the existence of life, but the splendid discov- 
eries of physical science inspired infidelity with the 
hope that this barrier might be overcome. The effort 
which followed was immense, but the defeat was over- 
whelming. A true physiological psychology finds that 
life cannot be explained without reference to spiritual 
existence and powers. It acknowledges the varieties 
and possibilities of matter, but finds matter incapable 
of accounting for living functions of the body, much 



312 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

less those which we term intellectual functions. An- 
atomy has not been able to find a point which may be 
termed the seat of the soul, although a soul is neces- 
sary for secretion and motion, as well as for intellec- 
tion. Anatomy can point out no bodily organ for 
will, or desire, or love, or any other mental affection, 
while biology shows how influential these are over the 
whole personality. The biblical dualism of mind and 
matter in the living organism is the only rational in- 
terpretation of biological facts. As we have seen in 
preceding chapters, the cerebral psychology which 
identifies mind and brain, and the popular ignorance 
which considers brain structure to be necessary to 
thought, find no support in true science. Scores of 
well-authenticated cases, in which the brain was greatly 
injured, or even absent, without exhibiting either men- 
tal or physical derangement, are inconsistent with the 
theory of the dependence of mind upon brain, while 
the vital functions of the body, as well as mental phe- 
nomena, require a spiritual cause, or psyche, for their 
origin and maintenance. 

6. Philosophic dualism. Lotze has shown that it is 
quite possible to conceive of unextended existence 
having a definite position in space, since we conceive 
of the divine Omniscience as of an infinite being 






THE BIBLICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 313 

having to every part of the universe an equally close 
relation. Physical science also shows us, in the vary- 
ing attraction of gravity, finite beings which recipro- 
cate action with others similar to them, but in different 
degrees of relationship, and biology exhibits individ- 
uality in organisms, acting over a fixed extent, but 
only indirectly reciprocal to all beyond its limits. 
The opinion of Sir William Hamilton, that the soul 
has no need of a special seat, but is present in every 
part of the living organism — all in all and all in every 
part — is therefore by no means inconceivable. If the 
old philosophic axiom be true, that a thing is where it 
acts, the finite spiritual personality, or psyche, must 
affect the entire corporeity, and is as present in the 
blood, muscles, or glands as it is in the brain or 
nerves. 

7. The psychical life of the body taught in the 
Bible. The Bible accords with physiology in its 
teaching concerning life. As we have already seen, its 
dualism is necessary to interpret the facts of science. 

The language of the Bible, like that of all Oriental 
people, is largely metaphorical, and a true principle of 
interpretation requires us to consider its meaning in 
accordance with the ideas and customs of the time 
wiien it was written. The most florid and metaphor- 



314 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

ical terms of Scripture, however, relating to man's 
nature, agree with scientific truth. The Bible regards 
the spiritual nature, or soul, as the ego, or true person- 
ality. It often uses the word translated " soul " as a 
synonym for person, and it recognizes the soul as in- 
fluential over various parts of the organism. In the 
account of creation given in Genesis both men and 
animals are called " living souls." In Josh. 10. 28 it 
is said that Joshua destroyed " all the souls " in Mak- 
kedah, and in 1 Sam. 20. 17 we learn that David 
loved Jonathan " as his own soul." In these and sim- 
ilar instances it is plainly a synonym for personal or 
individual life. 

As all living organisms, both plant and animal, need 
the interchange of gaseous elements, and breathe by 
means of a vital chemistry, the spiritual nature, as the 
active agent, is, by a metonymy common to all lan- 
guage, called the breath (ruauch and pneuma). In like 
manner, as the circulation of fluid pabulum is the uni- 
versal method of nutrition, by which that which is in- 
visible passes into visible material life, or bioplasm, 
" soul " and " blood " are also used interchangeably, as 
well as "breath." The following are sufficient in- 
stances. "The life of the flesh is in the blood" 
(Lev. 17. 11). "Soul poured out" (1 Sam. 2. 12). 



THE BIBLICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 315 

"The voice of thy brother's blood" (Genesis 4. 
10). "He poured out his soul unto death" (Isaiah 
53,), etc. 

The heart is the chief center of physical life, and is 
affected by every impulse and movement of our being. 
It is the most inward of all the inward parts, and is 
perhaps most often used as synonymous with " soul." 
Thus we read of " the thoughts of the heart," " the 
wickedness of the heart," " the purity of the heart," 
" the gladness of the heart," " the law written on the 
heart," etc. On account of the personal feelings pro- 
duced by mental and moral causes we read also of the 
reins, or loins, and of the bowels, as connected with 
mental manifestations. The head is not overlooked in 
the Bible in its relation to the soul, but it is not re- 
garded as the essential organ. Blessings are invoked 
upon the head (Deut. 30. 16), and the organs of spec- 
ial sense which are situated in the head, as the nostrils, 
eyes, and ears, afford some of the most striking biblical 
references to spiritual activity. Thus the Psalmist 
exclaims, " O taste and see that the Lord is good. 
Blessed is the man that trusteth in him." 

The, varied references of Scripture to the different 
parts of the body as representative of certain phases 
of mental or spiritual life accord with the philosophy 



316 PHYSIOLOGY OF TEE SOUL. 

which recognizes a soul, or psyche, as the source of all 
individual vital phenomena. 

8. Psyche in animals and men. In Genesis the 
words translated "living soul" are applied to animals 
as well as men, and "the spirit of a beast" is else- 
where recognized, as well as " the spirit of a man," 
although the tendencies of one are " downward " and 
those of the other "upward" from the earth. Job 
represents the young lions as crying unto God, and 
the horse as rejoicing in his strength, and Solomon in 
his proverbs praises the wisdom of the ant, as well as 
that of the conies and other animals. Such references 
are inconsistent and inappropriate if animals are merely 
material or mechanical automata. 

9. The revelation of man's triunity is above philos- 
ophy. Although men and animals agree in the posses- 
sion of certain faculties, which can only be explained 
by the activity and influence of a spiritual entity, or 
psyche, yet science and the Bible both recognize a vast 
chasm between animals and men. It is not merely 
that their intellectual powers differ in degree, although 
that is true. The difference between them is too rad- 
ical to be explained by the hypothesis of degrees of 
development. It is at this point that the superiority 
of the biblical psychology becomes evident. From 



THE BIBLICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 317 

the beginning of philosophic thought glimpses of fac- 
ulties in man, which are different from, and nobler 
than those of mere intellect — or reason occupied with 
the impressions made by the senses — have been faintly 
perceived by attentive observers ; but only vague or 
indistinct ideas relating to such faculties have been de- 
scribed. Aristotle distinguished several forms of soul 
—the nutritive, sensitive, motive, appetitive, and ra- 
tional. This was simplified by the scholastic philos- 
ophy, and only the nutritive, or vegetative soul, the 
sensitive, or animal, and the rational, or human, were 
recognized. Plato distinguished the mental faculties 
of man as sensation, which relates to the images and 
things of the visible world, discursive reason, whose 
objects are conceptions of the intelligible world by 
means of demonstration, and intuitive reason, which, 
by intuition, rises to the world of ideas, or types of 
things. Kant also divided between the understanding, 
or intellect, and the intuitional faculty, or reason. 
What was seen but dimly by the great masters of 
human philosophy the Bible makes clear by its annun- 
ciation of man's triune nature — body, soul, and spirit 
— each of which is essential to his personality in the 
present state of existence. See Chapter III, section 49. 
10. History of trichotomy in the church. The bib- 



318 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

lical trichotomy, or the distinction of body, soul, and 
spirit in man, was recognized by the earliest interpre- 
ters, or Greek fathers. Bishop Elliott says, " Irenseus, 
Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Didy- 
mus of Alexandria, Gregory of Nyssa, and Basil of 
Cesarea, all note the distinction of soul and spirit, and 
designate the spirit as that which bears the truest im- 
age of God." In the Latin or Western Church there 
was a prejudice against the doctrine of the trichotomy, 
because of certain errors and distorted views of the 
subject, as the claim of Origen and the Gnostics, that 
man's spirit is a portion of divinity, and incapable of 
sin, the Apollinarian view that Christ had soul and 
body like other men, but that the eternal Logos took 
the place of the spirit, and the semi-Pelagian idea that 
the spirit is excepted from the original sin which 
affected the body and soul. Such views by no means 
follow the adoption of the opinion of man's triune 
nature ; yet the opposition of Tertullian and the in- 
difference of Augustine to this doctrine led to a very 
general neglect, In recent times the works of Delitzsch, 
Beck, and Heard have revived an interest in this 
subject, and the return of so many theologians to the 
early opinion of the Church is matter for congratula- 
tion. 



THE BIBLICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 319 

11. Theological dualism erroneous. The opinion 
that the Bible considers man as consisting only of 
body and soul, regarding the terms soul and spirit as 
synonyms, has not been free from associated errors. 
Some who hold this view have taught the special im- 
manence of the divine Spirit in man ; but there is no 
indication of this in the Scriptures apart " from that 
general presence of the Godhead in the world which 
supports every created thing in its own special charac- 
ter." * It is directly opposed to many passages, as 
Zech. 12. 1, " The Lord which formeth the spirit of 
man within him ; " Deut. 2. 30, " God hardened his 
spirit;" Kom. 8. 16, "The Spirit itself beareth wit- 
ness with our spirit ; " 2 Cor. 7, 1, " Let us cleanse 
ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit," etc. 

12. The biblical trichotomy scientific. By the bib- 
lical trichotomy— body, soul, and spirit — we do not 
understand that three distinct natures are attributed to 
man; for the soul, or psyche, is spiritual, as well as. the 
spirit, or jpneuma. The duality of matter and spirit is 
as distinctly taught in the Bible as in a true physiology. 
Yet the pneuma is not a faculty of the psyche, but a 
distinct spiritual essence, having other faculties than 
the psyche, faculties which relate, not to intellectual 

* Delitzseh. Biblical Psychology. 



320 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

processes, but to spiritual truth. Such a combination 
is by no means unscientific nor unreasonable. Dr. H. 
Hartshorne has well said that "every specialization, 
each true elevation of type (which is a different thing 
from modification on the same plane of being), in- 
volves new force expenditure. Certain factors have 
been added in the evolution of nature whose origin is 
a mystery as yet quite unsolved by science. It is 
rational and philosophical, therefore, in the absence of 
any solution by secondary causation, to refer them to 
the direct creative action of the first cause. Such fac- 
tors, superadded from time to time in the past history 
of our globe, have been, 1, life ; 2, animality, as distinct 
from vegetative life ; 3, mind-force, instinct, intelli- 
gence, psyche ; 4, pneuma or spirit, possessed by 
man alone of all creatures on the earth."* 

13. Biblical proofs of triunity. The distinction 
between soul and spirit is clearly made in the Bible. 
It is very plainly expressed in the first account of 
man's nature given in Genesis, in connection with the 
narrative of creation. The " breath of life " (Gen. 2. 
7) which God breathed into man's nostrils is related 
to the " living soul " as cause and effect. They cannot, 
therefore, be identical. The distinction between the 

* Art Evolution, Johnson's Cyclopedia. 



THE BIBLICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 321 

words neshamah and nephesh (" breath of life" and " liv- 
ing soul" ) is ackno wedged by the best Hebrew scholars. 
The psychology of the Apostle Paul, in the New Tes- 
tament, corresponds with that of the Old Testament. 
In addressing the Tliessalonian Church he prasy 
(1 Thess. 5. 23) that their " whole spirit and soul and 
body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our 
Lord Jesus Christ." ~No language could more clearly 
indicate the trichotomy or express the view that each 
part of human nature needs the power of sanctifying 
grace. In Heb. 4. 12 the apostle attributes to God's 
word a living or quickening power, w T hich is " sharper 
than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the divid- 
ing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and 
marrowy and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents 
of the heart." In this passage the distinction between 
soul and spirit is as plain as that between the "joints 
and marrow," or the physical instruments of motion 
and of sensation. Again, in describing the resurrec- 
tion state, in 1 Cor. 15. 45, St. Paul declares that 
" there is a natural," or psychical, " body, and there is 
also a spiritual," or pneumatical " body." 

14. Trianity of man a central truth. The re- 
lations of this view of the triunity of man's nature to 

natural science and to systematic theology are mani- 
21 



322 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

fold and influential. The trichotomy renders clear 
that which was otherwise obscure, and harmonizes 
truths which, without it, seem scattered or isolated. 
As the heliocentric doctrine of astronomy proposed by 
Copernicus reduced the motions of the spheres to har- 
mony, which, on the geocentric theory of the old 
astronomers, seemed complicate and involved, so this 
view of man's nature respecting the origin and hered- 
itary nature of all our faculties simplifies the teachings 
of science, and binds together in beautiful symmetry 
the ethical and evangelical doctrines of theology. 

15. Definition of conscience. The ethical value of 
this doctrine may be illustrated by the simplicity and 
completeness of its definition of conscience. While 
man's spiritual nature is regarded as simply intel- 
lectual, conscience appears only as the reasoning fac- 
ulty occupied on the subject of duty, and many have 
claimed an inferior degree of conscience for domesti- 
cated animals. As soon as we clearly apprehend the 
distinction between the spirit and the soul, and recog- 
nize that the functions of the spirit relate to spiritual 
things, conscience becomes a synonym for spiritual 
consciousness. As the consciousness of the soul, or 
psyche, is its knowledge of its own acts and sensations, 
so conscience, or spiritual consciousness, is the knowl- 



i 



THE BIBLICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 323 

edge of the spirit in the sphere of spiritual life and 
duty. This view of conscience will be found to recon- 
cile many conflicting opinions and illuminate the 
whole field of ethics. 

16. Nature of human depravity. Our best theo- 
logians regard the fall of man as a depravation result- 
ing from deprivation of conscious communion with the 
divine spirit. But this deprivation affected most of 
all the spirit, or pneuma. Its psychical and bodily 
effects were gradual and secondary. So profound is 
this separation between the spirit of man and the 
Spirit of God that the Scriptures represent it as a 
spiritual death — not an annihilation, but a separation ; 
so that we read that " she which liveth in pleasure is 
dead while she liveth." So complete is this spiritual 
death that the acutest intellects among men are unable 
to rise to spiritual knowledge, but blunder and stum- 
ble in their treatises on moral and intellectual science, 
endeavoring to account for all the phenomena of man's 
nature on the ground of psychical reason. The psy- 
chical man " receiveth not the things of the Spirit of 
God ; for they are foolishness to him : neither can he 
know them, because they are spiritually discerned." (1 
Cor. 2. 14.) So profound is the depravation caused by 
the fall that the spirit which should have heard the 



324 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

voice of God directly, and shed an illuminating and 
quickening ray over every other part of man's being, 
now manifests its feeble presence in unrenewed men 
by the struggles of a darkened conscience, accusing or 
excusing the acts of the soul. 

17. The new birth a literal truth. Those interpre- 
ters of Scripture who deny the trichotomy find a diffi- 
culty in explaining what is meant by the new birth, 
so often insisted upon in the Bible as the condition of 
salvation. Ritualists say it is the new relation into 
which Christians are brought by baptism ; but, unless 
experience be altogether an illusion, some of the bap- 
tized are not, while others are, born of the Spirit. Yet 
if man be only soul and body, the difficulty of ISTico- 
demus remains unanswered, for neither soul nor body 
can be born a second time. The answer of Jesus was, 
" That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that 
which is born of the Spirit is spirit." It is the spirit 
which is born again, or from above, and it is as real as 
the birth of the flesh. Previous to the new birth the 
spirit has only an embryonic life. The new birth 
is not merely a new direction of the old powers, or a 
renovation of the old life ; there is a new direction 
and a renovation, but these result from the reality of 
the birth of the spirit. St. Jude (verse 19) describes 



THE BIBLICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 325 

the scoffers of the last days as " psychical, not having 
the spirit " — a paraphrase for " unregenerate."* Not 
that the human spirit is literally absent in unrenewed 
men. If it were so there would be no capacity for 
life. The struggles of conscience show the presence 
of the spirit, but these throes may be wholly embry- 
onic. At the new birth the spirit becomes manifest 
and influential, and spiritual influence pervades the 
entire nature. Thenceforth the spiritual life is one of 
direct communion with God. Prayer and worship 
are not mere intellectual discourses about God, but 
converse with God, and the spirit rejoices in its newly- 
found home and sphere. 

18. Biblical psychology and the resurrection. The 
relation of biblical psychology to theology may also 
be seen in the light it throws upon eschatology. The 
vexed questions respecting the future state of hu- 
manity may not all be solved by it, and discussions as 
to the identity of the future body may remind us that 
we know not " what we shall be ; " yet the declara- 
tions of St. Paul, in the 15th chapter of 1 Corinthians, 
suffice to assure us of the superior glory of the resur- 
rection state. He tells us that " there is a psychical 
(or natural) body, and there is a pneumatical (or spirit- 

* Heard's Tripartite Nature of Man. 



326 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 

ual) body." He declares also that the present organ- 
ism, when its life is ended, " is sown a psychical (or 
natural) body," but will be " raised a pneumatical (or 
spiritual) body." It will differ from the present body 
as the grown plant differs from its seed. It will attain 
the height of its development by its redemption " from 
the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory 
of the children of God." (Rom. 8. 21. Revised 
Version.) For this deliverance Christians hope, and 
" with patience wait for it." The divine power which 
is exerted upon our human nature through the reali- 
zation of "the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus" 
begins with quickening the spirit which was " dead in 
trespasses and in sins," converts the psyche from 
minding " the things of the flesh," renders it " spirit- 
ually minded," and achieves a final victory over death 
by the glory of the resurrection. For, " if the Spirit of 
him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he 
that raised up Christ Jesus from the dead shall also 
quicken your mortal bodies through his spirit that 
dwelleth in you." Thus " Jesus and the resurrection " 
is the crowning result of the study of biblical psy- 
chology. 



INDEX. 



Accommodation of eye, 187. 
Acephalous children, 133. 
Achromaticity of eye, 184. 
Affection, 214. 

Afferent and efferent nerves, 112. 
Agassiz, 18. 
Alternate heredity, 296. 
Alternation of generations, 297. 
American crow-bar case, 135. 
Amoeba, 272. 
Amoeboid motion, 25. 
Amphioxus, 132. 
Angle of vision, 188. 
Animal types, 18. 
Animal and vegetable life indis- 
tinguishable, 166. 
Anima mundi, 71. 
Animism of Stahl, 72. 
Ant, intelligence of, 131. 
Aphasia mental, 142. 

discussion on, 144. 
Archeus, 71, 73. 

Arrest of hereditary disease, 302. 
Associational theory, 200. 
Atavism, 296. 
Atomic atheism, 38. 

theories, 55. 
Automatic nerve action, 103. 

bodily actions, 223. 

mental actions, 224. 
Automatism, 219. 

I*. 

Beale, Dr. L., 22, 44, 48, 61. 
Biblical psychology, 308. 



Biblical psychology superior to 
metaphysics, 316. 

view of the soul, 314. 
Bichat, 21. 
Bioplasm, 13-14. 
Bioplasson doctrine, 22. 
Bioplasts, varied work of, 14. 
Blood-vessels of brain, influence 

of, 116. 
Body an imperfect vehicle, 222. 
Bowne on correlation, 63. 
Brain but one organ of mind, 96. 

cells not registers, 204. 

disease without symptoms, 133, 
137. 

injuries, 134-136. 

no index of mind, 118. 



Carpenter on vital force, 59. 

on reflex action, 109. 

on volition, 255-259. 
Cases of brain injuries, 138, 140. 
Catalysis, 29. 
Cause of heredity, 282. 
Causes of insanity not all cerebral, 

148. 
Cell division complicate, 273. 
Cell-structure, 13. 
Cell theory of memory, 206. 
Cerebellum, 112. 
Cerebral hemispheres, 112. 

ganglia, 113, 126. 

psychology, 90, 99. 
Chain of development, 47, 267. 
Checks to hereditv, 300. 



328 



INDEX. 



Chemistry of bioplasm, 28. 
Classes of tastes, 182. 
Cochlea, 190. 
Ccensesthesis, 169. 
Collateral heredity, 298. 
Common sensation, 169. 
Comparative theology, '308. 
Concept, nature of the, 197. 
Conditions of consciousness, 

155. 
Conflict of will and desire, 246. 
Consanguinity. 302. 
Conscience, 322. ■ 
Consciousness, 152. 

conditions of, 155. 

internal, 195. 

of body, 165. 

of embryo, 167. 

of physical conditions, 169. 

of reasoning process, 212. 

of self, 161. 

of sense-objects, 172. 

of spiritual things, 214. 

of things and qualities, 160. 

unity of, 154. 

veracity of, 160. 
Consensual actions. 172. 
Constructive power of bioplasm, 

29. 
Contrast between men and ani- 
mals, 316. 
Control of automatism, 259. 

of heredity, 282. 
Convergent eye-s, 184. 
Convolutions of brain, 117. 
Cornea, 184. 
Corpora striata, 112. 
Corporeal sensitiveness, 166. 
Correlation of force, 59. 
Corti's organ, 190. 
Cosmo-plastic theory, 39, 69. 
Crystalline lens, 184. 
Crystallization not growth, 28. 



Crystals unlike bioplasm, 45. 
Cudworth, 38. 
Cuvier, 18. 

D. 

Darwinism, 20, 284. 
Death, 86. 
Definition of life, 9. 
Demiurge, 71. 
Denial of life, 39. 
Descartes, 39, 158, 246. 
Development, 20, 30, 268. 
Difference in germs, 271. 
Differentiation of cells, 269. 
Direct heredity, 295. 
Distance, impression of, 187. 
Distinction of vital force, 61. 
Divine ideal, 262. 
Division of cell-nuclei, 274. 
Double consciousness, 239. 
Dowler, experiments of Dr., 139. 
Dreaming, 234. 
Dualism explains life, 72. 
scientific, 293. 



Education, 260. 
Elementary libers, 23. 
nerve-structure, 100. 
Elements of organisms, 21. 
Emanations in sensation, 173. 
Embryological resemblances, 48. 
Embryonic development, 274. 
Emotion, 214. 
Endosmose, 28. 
Environment, 265. 
Epigenesis, 284, 286. 
Epilepsy, 225. 

Epithelium modified for sense- 
organs, 174. 
Erect objects, 188. 
Errors of sense, 194. 
Eschatology, 325. 
Ethical value of trichotomy, 322. 



INDEX. 



329 



Evolution, early theory of, 283. 
Exceptions to heredity, 298. 
Experience, 201. 
External form inherited, 276. 
Extraordinary dreams, 237. 
Eye formed in darkness, 84. 
not imperfect, 186. 

F. 

Faculties of mind, 200. 
Fall, doctrine of, 323. 
Family resemblances, 276. 
Fantasy, 203. 
Feeling, 214. 

Ferrier on localization, 120, 141. 
Feuchtersleben on freedom, 252. 
Form predetermined, 84. 
Free-will, 242. 

objections answered, 244. 

proof of, 243. 
Frogs, experiments on, 140. 

G. 

Ganglionic nerves, 170. 
General paralysis of insane, 149. 
Generation, 35. 
Gnostic reasons, 173. 
Goodsir, Professor, on life, 73. 
Gratiolet, 144. 
Gravitation, 16. 

Gray matter of brain, 114. 118. 
Guy, Dr., on illusions, 241. 

H. 

Habits, 256. 

inherited, 280. 
Haeckel, 40. 
Haller, 21. 
Healing prophetic of redemption, 

86. 
Hearing, 188. 
Heat, adaptibility to, 16. 

sensibility to, 179. 
Heitzman, 22. 



Hereditary disease, 278. 
Heredity, 264. 

in education, 303. 
Histology of nerves, 114. 

of sense-organs, 1 74. 
Holmes on suggestion, 230. 
Holoblasticbva, 272. 
Human ovum, 270. 
Huxley, 52. 
Hylozoism, 38, 55. 
Hypnotism, 227. 



Ideas, 196. 

Ideation not sensation, 199. 

Identity not in atoms, 78. 

of psychic and vital force, 95. 

of soul, 154, 292. 
Imagination, 211. 

in animals, 212. 
Imaginary facts not science, 208. 
Individuality, 265. 
Individual origin, 272. 
Indivisibility of mind, 98. 
Inherent motion of bioplasm, 25. 
Inherent variations, 277. 

impulses, 281. 
Inheritance not material, 85. 
Inhibitory nerve action, 105. 
Initial heredity, 295. 
Initiative volition, 255. 
Insanity, 229. 

no certain lesion in, 146, 148. 
Insectivorous plants, 27. 
Insect volition, 248. 
Intellect not in brain, 125. 

not physical, 124. 
Intellectual heredity, 279. 
Intensity of touch, 178. 
Interaction of soul and body, 156. 

of soul and world, 192. 
Intermediate phantasms, 174. 
Internal experience, 195. 



330 



INDEX. 



Internal constitution inherited, 

277. 
Invertebrates, 130. 
Irresponsible automatism, 241. 
Isolating eyes, 183. 

J. 

Judgment, no physical organ of, 
213. 

K. 
Kant, on causality, 33. 

on chain of nature, 47. 

on mental faculties, 215. 

on the concept, 197. 
Kleptomania, 226. 
Knowledge, latent, 159. 

from touch, 177. 

L. 

Lamarck, 19. 

Latent life, 15. 

Law of alternation, 233. 

Leibnitz, 39, 158. 

Lewes on reflex action, 108. 

Life, definition of, 9, 93. 

not an entity, 72, 93. 

not organization, 55. 

various products of, 17. 
Linnaeus, 18. 
Living and non-living contrasted, 

77. 
Living matter, 14, 15. 

a reticulum, 127. 

a unit, 126. 

properties of, 23. 
Localization of brain functions, 

120,122. 
Locomotor ataxia, 179. 
Lotze on soul's unity, 154. 

M. 

Machines, the living are not, 34, 

45. 
Mania, brain in, 148. 



Materialism one-sided, 291. 
Materialistic discussions, 94. 
Matter not spirit, 58. 
Maudsley, 146. 
Max Muller, 216. 
Medulla oblongata, 112. 
Melancholia, brain healthy in, 148. 
Memory not retention, 202. 

a spiritual activity, 209. 

needs no bodily organ, 211. 
Mental concentration, 257. 

derangement, 146. 
Meroblastie ova, 272. 
Mesmerism, 227. 
Methods of materialists, 207. 

of heredity, 294. 
Mind, not always conscious, 158. 

not located in brain, 99. 

organs of, 96. 

psyche and soul synonymous, 
90, 95. 

varied use of term, 90. 
Minute anatomy of nerves, 114. 
Molecular death, 86. 
Monstrosities, 36. 
Moral sense, 259, 
Movements of infusoria, 165. 
Muscular sense, 179. 
Myxomycetes, 272. 

N. 

National effects of heredity, 302. 
Natural and reflective conscious- 
ness, 164. 
Natural history of ancients, 18. 
Nerve impressions, 205. 

vibrations, 204. 
Nerves, arrangement of, 100. 

functions of, 102. 
Nicholson, Professor, on life, 95. 
Non-living parts of organisms, 

13. 
Nutrition of bioplasm, 26, 27. 



INDEX. 



331 



o. 

Odors, varieties of, 182. 
Optic thalaini, 113. 

nerve, 185. 
Organic functions not physical, 

81. 
Organic phosphorescence, 208. 
Organization not life, 55. 
Organs of mind, 96. 
Origin of organisms, 17. 



Pangenesis, 284. 

Passions, 214. 

Pathological automatism, 225. 

Perception, 173. 

Pflugger's experiments, 107. 

Phenomena of Kant, 173. 

real as laws, 291. 
Phosphorescence not memory, 206. 
Phrenology, 119. 
Physical nature subordinate, 81. 

basis of life, 52. 
Physiologists not in harmony, 106. 
Physiology and Bible agree, 311, 

313. 
Place of vision, 186. 
Plastic nature, 71. 
Plato's faculties, 215. 
Pneuma, 75, 216, 319. 
Pons varolii, 112. 
Porter, Dr., on life and soul, 91. 
Potentiality of germ, 268. 
Pre-existing species, 173. 
Preordained harmony, 158. 
Presentative faculty, 201. 
Primary and secondary conscious- 
ness, 163. 
Prophetic dreams, 238. 
Protoplasm, 13. 
Psyche incarnate in bioplasm, 126. 

in embryonic life, 79. 

in plants, 78. 



Psyche superior to matter, 81. 
Psychical ideation, 197. 
Psychological inheritance, 287. 

truth in the Bible, 309. 
Purkiuje's figures, 186. 
Purposive selection, 257. 

Q. 

Qualities of sounds, 189. 

R. 

Pay's classification, 18. 
Eeasoning, 212. 
Recognition of ideas, 199. 
Recollection, 203. 
Reflection, 195. 
Reflex nerve-action, 104. 

centers of brain, 106. 
Reformation, possibility of, 259. 
Regeneration, 324. 
Regulative volition, 255. 
Rejuvenescence, 269. 
Relation of mind and brain, 149. 
Repair of organisms, 32. 
Representative emanations, 173. 
Reproduction of bioplasm, 32. 

of mental states, 202. 
Responsibility, 254. 
Retina, 185. 
Rods and cones of retina, 185. 

S. 
Sarcode, 13, 22. 
Science in the Bible, 311. 
Schleiden and Schwann, 22. 
Seat of soul, 98. 
Seguin on cephalism, 129. 
Selection by bioplasm, 26. 
Self-consciousness, 161. 
Self-recognition, 162. 
Semi-conscious automatism, 229. 
Sensation, 99, 173. 

in tne mind, 125, 193. 
Sensations classified, 176. 



332 



INDEX. 



Sense of hearing, 188. 

of light, 182. 

of smell, 181. 

of taste, 182. 

of touch, 177. 

of vision, 183. 

of weight, 179. 
Sensibility, 214. 
Sensitiveness of animals, 178. 
Sensorium, 99. 
Sentiments, 214. 
Sleep, 232. 
Smell, 181. 

Solidity, impression of, 187. 
Somatic death, 87. 
Somnambulism, 235. 
Soul in all the body, 174. 

men and animals, 316. 
Spencer's eternal fact, 217. 
Spinal cord, 107, 110. 
Spirit and soul distinguished, 75, 

320. 
Spiritual consciousness, 214. 
Spiritus rector, 181. 
Spontaneous generation, 50. 
Spores, 271. 

Stirling's reply to Huxley, 54. 
Structure and function, 31, 82. 
Substance, idea of, 199. 
Sympathetic nerves, 170, 171. 
Synonyms for soul, 314. 

T. 

Tactile corpuscles, 177. 

Taste, 182. 
Touch, 177. 



Training of idiots, 128. 
Trance, 228. 

speakers, 228. 
Transitory mania, 254. 
Transmission of power, 288, 292. 
Transmutation, 301. 
Trichotomy, 317. 
Triunity of man's nature, 321. 
Trophic nerve-action, 105. 
Tyndall, 56, 156. 
Typical form, 267, 270. 

U. 

Unconscious adaptations, 108. 

cerebration, 225. 
Unity of consciousness, 154. 

V. 

Varieties, 272, 273. 

Varying results of experimenters, 

122. 
Vestibule of ear, 190. 
Virchow, 22, 50. 
Vision, mental, 193. 
Vis viva, 66. 
Vital intelligence, 83. 

functions, psychical, 80, 95. 
Vitalism, 72. 
Vocalization, 256. 
Volition, 221, 242. 

in animals, 247. 

limit of, 251. 

W. 

Wanderinsr cells, 25. 

Webster, Hon. D., brain of, 137. 

Will, 243. 



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